I’ve received a number of interesting and important questions from readers over the past couple of weeks, and would like to devote a couple of posts to airing my answers to everyone.   QUESTION: I have a question for Bart. Every year right before Christmas we get numerous claims that Jesus was a Palestinian or a Palestinian Jew. As far as I know it’s not true but if you have academic evidence it’s true I will change my mind.   RESPONSE: It's a tricky business.  The areas of Galilee, Samaria, and Judea were together renamed "Palestine" in 135 CE.  In Jesus' day they were called by their separate names.  They were not called "Israel."  In two of the Gospels, Jesus is born in Bethlehem of Judea; does that make him a Judean?  Normally yes.  But he is raised and ministers in Galilee. Does that make him a Galilean?  Normally yes.  Today we usually refer to both areas as Israel, as it was originally called.  Should he be called an Israelite?  That term was [...]

Last week, the final two reprints of my favorite "Posts of Christmas Past" reproduced an article I had written over a decade ago for Newsweek about the Christmas stories of the New Testament.  I received a good bit of blow-back from the article itself, from various directions; that led me to write post explaining my views of a broader issue.  Is there anything to appreciate from a narrative that "didn't happen that way" or that we simply don't believe?  Here is what I wrote. ****************************** When the editor at Newsweek asked me if I would be willing to write an article on the birth of Jesus, I was hesitant and wrote him back asking if he was sure he really wanted me to do it.  I told him that I seem to be incapable of writing anything that doesn’t stir up controversy.  It must be in my blood.  Still, he said that they knew about my work and were not afraid of controversy, and they did indeed want an article from me. What’s [...]

2024 has been a remarkable year for the Blog.  We have set a record for the amount of money we raised and donated to our charities; we have hired a highly skilled CEO who has taken charge and already made vast improvements, and we have chosen a design company to come up with a whole new platform (Blog 3) that will revolutionize how we do things. Details to follow.  But first let me say I am especially pleased that we have succeeded in pursuing the original goals of the blog (in some ways, better than ever).    Namely: (1) To spread and propagate real knowledge about the historical Jesus, the New Testament, and the history and literature of Christianity over its first four centuries or so, and in doing so to generate more interest, dispel more ignorance, and encourage more thinking on religious, historical, and literary issues that are of particularly keen interest to the two billion Christians in the world and also of keen interest to the billions of others who are not believers but [...]

The End is Near!  At least the End of 2024…. We are trying very hard to make this the most momentous year of the Blog’s existence (we started in 2012) -- and by that I mean the one that exceeds all others in our primary mission, to raise funds for charities that help those among us who are in desperate need. For the occasoin I want to make a direct end-of-the-year-giving ultimate year-end-appeal, connected with our already-announced Year-End Appeal (Special Webinar Announcement: Ehrman Blog Annual Appeal).  Many of us make a last-day yearly donation somewhere or another (I’m thinkin’… taxes….).  And here in These Last Days I am happy to announce that the Blog has just received a matching grant offer. An anonymous donor has agreed to chip in $5000 if we can match the funds between now and midnight December 31.  All donations will go toward the match.  How's 'bout it?  Can you chip something in, like $5 / $50 / $500 / or, hey, if the powers of the universe move you, $5000? Every [...]

Now that Christmas has ended it is a good time to reflect more broadly on the difference between reading the Christmas story, and in fact, the Bible as a whole, for its religious significance -- which, of course, is how and why most people read it in the first place -- and trying to consider it historically.  Is there any easy way to make the distinction? Here’s how I explain the difference at the at the beginning of my textbook on the Bible, to explain the difference between a theological (or confessional) approach to the Bible and a historical approach. ***************************** EXCURSUS Most of the people who are deeply interested in the Bible in modern American culture are committed Jews or Christians who have been taught that this is a book of sacred texts, Scripture, unlike other books.  For many of these – especially many Christian believers – the Bible is the inspired word of God.  In communities of faith that hold such views, the Bible is usually studied not from a historical perspective by [...]

Here now is the eleventh of my twelve favorite Christmas posts of years gone by, in our celebration of the Twelve Days of Christmas. ****************************** I mentioned in my previous post that in 2012 I was asked to write an article on Newsweek about the Christmas story.  Before it appeared I posted it on the blog; here it is in full (at least as I sent it in to the magazine), in two parts. Here is the first half: This past September, Harvard University professor Karen King unveiled a newly discovered Gospel fragment that she entitled “The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife.”  This wisp of a papyrus has stirred up a hornet’s nest and raised anew questions about what we can know about the historical Jesus of Nazareth, and about whether there are other Gospels outside the New Testament that can contribute valuable information. Few questions could be more timely, here in the season that celebrates Jesus’ birth. The fragment is just a scrap – the size of a credit card – written in Coptic, the language of [...]

Here now is the tenth of my twelve favorite Christmas posts of years gone by, in our celebration of the Twelve Days of Christmas. ****************************** Browsing through holiday-season blogs from previous eras, I came across my first small thread on Christmas from exactly six years ago.  I had forgotten about this.  Some of the material has shown up occasionally in the intervening years, but maybe it’s a good time to repost a bit of it.  Here is the first: an account of what we can, and cannot, know about Jesus’ birth.  Bethlehem?  Virgin?  Date?   Or even … year? I have decided to provide a series of posts related to the stories of Christmas in the New Testament. This first post more or less states some of the basic information that most readers know, but that it’s worth while stressing as a kind of ground clearing exercise. To begin with, we are extremely limited in our sources when it comes to knowing anything at all about the birth of Jesus. In fact, at the end of the [...]

Here now is the ninth of my twelve favorite Christmas posts of years gone by, in our celebration of the Twelve Days of Christmas. This one comes from 2018. ****************************** Let’s explore the key contradiction in the Birth Narratives of Jesus. Several readers have asked about my comment that Matthew and Luke appear to contradict each other in their birth narratives, especially when Matthew indicates that Jesus’ family fled to Egypt after his birth but Luke claims they went straight back to Nazareth, a month later.   I’ve posted on this issue several times over the years on the blog, but maybe a refresher would be helpful for those with questions.  Here is how I explain the matter in my book Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium, slightly edited.  (See especially my final point.) Matthew and Luke are the only Gospels that narrate the events of Jesus’ birth (in both Mark and John, Jesus makes his first appearance as an adult).  What is striking – and what most readers have never noticed – is that the [...]

Here now is the eighth of my twelve favorite Christmas posts of years gone by, in our celebration of the Twelve Days of Christmas. This one is from 2014. ****************************** A few days ago I raised the question of why anyone should think that you have to believe in the Virgin Birth in order to be a Christian.  The reality is, of course, that many Christians do not believe in it, but recognize that it is a story meant to convey an important theological point – a point that could be true whether or not the story happened – that Jesus was uniquely special in this world, not like us other humans, but in some sense the unique Son of God.   Just as the moral of a fairy tale is valid (or not) independent of whether the tale happened, so too with stories like this in the Gospels, whether you choose to call them myths (in a non-derogatory sense), legends, tales, or simply “stories intending to convey a theological truth.” It is interesting, and not often noted, that [...]

Here now is the seventh of my twelve favorite Christmas posts of years gone by, in our celebration of the Twelve Days of Christmas. ****************************** As I’ve indicated, it is only Matthew and Luke that tell the tales of the infancy narrative, and the annual “Christmas Pageant” that so many of us grew up seeing is in fact a conflation of the two accounts, making one mega-account out of two that are so different up and down the line. And so, the Annunciation to Mary is in Luke, the dream of Joseph in Matthew; the shepherds are in Luke, the wise men in Matthew; the trip to Bethlehem is in Luke, the Flight to Egypt is in Matthew, and so forth and so on. You can compare them yourself, up and down the line, and see the differences. In this post I want to focus on Luke’s account. Then I will look at Matthew’s. And then I will compare the two in a couple of key points in order to show that the differences between [...]

Here now is the sixth of my twelve favorite Christmas posts of years gone by, in our celebration of the Twelve Days of Christmas. ****************************** QUESTION: My Bible group had a good time yesterday comparing Matthew's and Luke’s accounts of the Christmas story. One question that came up was why would Matthew relate the story of the Magi?   RESPONSE Ah, it’s a great question and – as it turns out – an important one for understanding the Gospel of Matthew.   The story is found only in this Gospel (But this time of year, who can keep ones mind from jumping to:  “We Three Kings of Orient Are….”), and it is  filled with intriguing conundra. For example, why would pagan astrologers from the East be interested in knowing where the King of Israel was born and come to worship him?  Were they doing this for all babies who were bound to become kings of foreign countries?  How does a star lead them to Jerusalem and then disappear and then reappear and lead the Magi not just [...]

Here now is the fourth of my twelve favorite Christmas posts of years gone by, in our celebration of the Twelve Days of Christmas. ****************************** On several occasions on the blog I have discussed the similarities and differences between the accounts of Jesus’ birth in Matthew and Luke (Matthew 1-2 and Luke 1-2), most recently, I think, two years ago at this time (check out the archives for December 2020).  I won’t go over all that turf again just now, but I do want to hit several of the key points because I think the *discrepancies* between the two accounts that appear irreconcilable tell us something significant about the birth of Jesus.  I think they help show that he was actually born in Nazareth. Both accounts go to great lengths to show how Jesus could be born in *Bethlehem* when everyone in fact knew that he *came* from Nazareth. It is a particular problem for Matthew, because he points out that Jesus fulfilled the prophecy of Micah 5:2 , that a great ruler (the Messiah) would [...]

Here now is the third of my twelve favorite Christmas posts of years gone by, in our celebration of the Twelve Days of Christmas. ****************************** As we move to the Christmas season, I thought it would be interesting to post some extracts on one of the most popular Gospels in the Middle Ages, an account of Jesus’ birth – and before that, his mother Mary’s birth – and what happened in the aftermath.   It is called the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, because modern scholars once thought that it had claimed to be written by Matthew (the author of the first canonical Gospel); but in fact, as you will see, it claims to be written by Jesus’ brother James. The Gospel comes to us in Latin and was probably produced in the early 7th century.   Some of you may know, from the blog or elsewhere, a Greek Gospel of this description from the 2nd century, the Proto-Gospel of James.   This later Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew is a kind of reworking and expansion of the Proto-Gospel, with some parts [...]

Here now is the second of my twelve favorite Christmas posts of years gone by, in our celebration of the Twelve Days of Christmas. *********************** Once more the season is come upon us. At its heart stands a tale of two-thousand year vintage, the Christmas story. Or perhaps we should say the Christmas myth. When Post-Enlightenment scholars turned their critical tools on the tales of Scripture, the birth of Jesus to a virgin in Bethlehem was one of the first subjected to skeptical scrutiny.  Not only was the notion of a virgin birth deemed unhistorical on general principle.  The other familiar aspects of the story were seriously called into question. The story comes to us as a conflation of episodes found in only two of our Gospels, Matthew and Luke.  (The Gospels of Mark and John begin with Jesus as an adult, and give no information about the unusual circumstances of his birth.)   Combining these accounts into a mega-story for an annual Christmas pageant bears a cost, as they are seriously at odds [...]