Page 30 – The Bart Ehrman Blog

August Gold Q&A–Get Your Qs In!

I'll be recording another Q&A for all Gold & Platinum members soon, so here's your chance to take advantage of this perk. Send me whatever question has been nagging at you (blog-related, of course!). Short, to-the-point questions of general interest are most likely to get answered. Send an email to Diane at [email protected], and she'll compile all your questions for me. DEADLINE: Please get your question in by Friday the 16th at midnight (whenever midnight is in your time zone).

Diane2025-09-10T13:08:32-04:00August 5th, 2024|Public Forum|

Competing Interpretations of Scripture in the Early Church

Early Christians interpreted their sacred texts in a variety of ways, some of them a bit bizarre to many modern readers, as I pointed out in my previous post. Here I discuss two different views of the matter, one by a Gnostic Christian named Ptolemy and the other by the most famous opponent of the Gnostics, Irenaeus. Here are the Introductions to their discussions that I give in my book After the New Testament (2nd edition, Oxford University Press, 2014); after the introductions, in the book I give modern English translations of their discussions themselves, one translated from the Coptic and the other from Latin. If your interest is piqued in what they actually say, and in the dozens of other ancient Christian writings I provide in the book, check it out! ****************************** Ptolemy's Letter to Flora One of the most famous disciples of (the Christian gnostic) Valentinus (see the Gospel of Truth) was Ptolemy, a renowned gnostic teacher who lived in Rome in the mid-second century. From Ptolemy's own hand comes one of the [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:08:16-04:00August 4th, 2024|Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE), Heresy and Orthodoxy|

Ancient Ways of Interpreting Scripture

Did the earliest Christians interpret texts the way people do today? I'm not asking if they always had the same interpretation; I'm asking if their approach to and methods of interpretation were the same. It's a surprising answer. In particular, the various ways texts got interpreted may not be expected. I deal with it in my book After the New Testament (2nd edition, Oxford University Press, 2014), the anthology of early Christian texts that I discussed on the blog a week or so ago. The book presents modern translations of Christian writings from right after the New Testament roughly up to the conversion of Constantine (so, the second and third centuries, 100-300 CE). I organized them according to topics and for each topic I gave an explanatory introduction, then gave a brief introduction for each of the writings themselves as they occurred. Here is the introduction for the section dealing with how early Christians interpreted the Bible. Text and Meaning: The Interpretation of Scripture in Early Christianity The Bible was important from [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:08:16-04:00August 3rd, 2024|Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE), History of Christianity (100-300CE)|

Does Paul Have Contradictory Views of the Law, Love, and Salvation?

In my post yesterday I began talking about Paul's understanding of salvation coming to gentiles without having to keep the Jewish law. Now I get to the real problem. Doesn't Paul contradict his own views of the need to keep the law when he talks about the importance of love? Here's a fairly rough draft of my current thoughts on the matter. ****************************** The animosity between Paul and his missionary opponents was mutual. His letter responds to their claim that he was a false or ignorant teacher who had willfully and wrongly altered the teachings of Jesus and his original apostles. The also apparently claimed that Paul’s teaching that “justification” (that is, being right with God) came “apart from the Law,” showed he was proclaiming a “lawless gospel,” encouraging people to live in lawless ways. The implications were not hard to discern: Paul’s opponents claimed his view sanctioned immoral behavior: it did not much matter how people lived, so long as they believed in Jesus. Paul countered this claim with equal vehemence, [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:08:16-04:00August 1st, 2024|Paul and His Letters|

Salvation, Love, and the Jewish Law in Paul. Are His Views Internally Coherent?

In my book on Christian ethics I'll naturally be dealing with the views of Paul, which are more complicated that one might suspect. One of the things I'll try to be showing is that his teachings on Christian "love" in some places seems to stand at odds with his teachings on salvation. I've drafted up this bit of the discussion, but it will take two posts to lay it out. Here's the first. One can hardly talk about early Christian views of love without discussing at length the views of the apostle Paul. Whereas most readers consider Paul’s emphasis on love completely understandable, a close reading of his writings reveals some aspects of his views that are theologically puzzling or even internally incoherent. Throughout his writings, and especially in his letters to the Galatians and the Romans, Paul deals with a pressing issue that occupied a good deal of his attention; even though most Christians have never given it a passing thought: How could the salvation provided by the Jewish God by [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:08:16-04:00July 31st, 2024|Paul and His Letters|

Did the Roman Government Become More “Moral” Once it Became Christian?

I'm still drafting away on my book on the difference Jesus' ethics made on the moral conscience of the West, and one thing I'm ruminating on is whether Christian emperors were more ethically conscious (in a way moderns would recognize) than their pagan predecessors. Here's a first draft of my discussion of the matter. ****************************** With the Christianization of the empire there were to be sure major beneficial effects on wider society and sometimes these came not from the actions of church leaders in providing material assistance to the poor, hungry, orphaned, widowed, homeless, elderly, and outcast, but on occasion from the imperial government itself. This started already with the first Christian emperor, Constantine, who converted to the faith in 312 CE. In some ways Constantine’s new religious commitments affected his interventions in social problems rampant throughout the empire. Infanticide had been practiced since time immemorial, especially in cases where an unwanted child was born to a family that simply could not afford it. In 315 CE Constantine passed legislation that applied to all [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:08:16-04:00July 30th, 2024|Fourth-Century Christianity|

More Major Issues Confronting the Early Christians.

What were the major issues, concerns, and debates confronting the earliest Christians? My book After the New Testament: A Reader in Early Christianity (Oxford University Press, 2nd ed, 2015) addresses these issues. I've explained the book in my two previous posts. Here is my third, again giving an excerpt from the General Introduction, explaining the rubrics I used in the book to cover the vital topics of Christian Origins, chapter by chapter. At the end I provide a bibliography for further reading, books that cover the history of the period broadly and competently. ****************************** Christians of all theological persuasions in the second and third centuries realized that having a set of books deemed authoritative or “scriptural” could not, in itself, provide guidance over what to believe or how to behave. Books needed to be interpreted in order to be understood, and to be understood correctly. And the early centuries of the church witnessed numerous debates over just how books were to be read and used. Among the debates was the question of whether a [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:08:16-04:00July 28th, 2024|Book Discussions, Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE)|

Major Issues in the Earliest Christian Centuries (In my Book After the New Testament)

What were the key issues, controversies, developments, and concerns of the Christian communities of the first three centuries? These are the topics considered in my book After the New Testament: A Reader in Early Christianity (Oxford University Press, 2nd ed, 2015). In the previous post I explained that the book is a collection of most of the most important writings from the second and third centuries -- the period right after the books of the New Testament were themselves written. Here I talk about the various themes that I used to organize my collection, themes that I judged to be the most significant for anyone trying to understand Christianity in earliest times. This will take two posts. ****************************** By way of introduction to this collection of ancient Christian writings, I should say a word about the nature of the rubrics I'll be using and the logic of their sequencing. This need not entail a lengthy discussion: each chapter begins with a sketch of the important historical aspects of the topic, and each individual [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:08:16-04:00July 27th, 2024|Book Discussions, Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE)|

My Most Helpful Book? After the New Testament: A Reader in Early Christianity

What happened in early Christianity just *after* the period of the New Testament? It's an unknown period for most people, but of vital importance for anyone interested in the Christian religion. For the next three posts I'll explain by discussing my book devoted to the topic, After the New Testament: A Reader in Early Christianity (Oxford University Press, 2nd ed, 2015) In some ways, I think After the New Testament is the most *useful* book I've ever done. It is an anthology of important ancient Christian texts in readable English translations, each with introductions that explain what they are about and why they matter. Some of these are texts you may have heard of. Some, I bet not! But they are all important and intriguing. In these posts I will explain my book by excerpting the General Introduction, which introduces readers to the fascinating world of Christian Origins and shows it's importance and the problems its study poses for scholars. ****************************** General Introduction (Part 1) Over the past century and a half, archaeological [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:08:16-04:00July 25th, 2024|Book Discussions, Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE)|

Not a Game-Changer? Why I’d Still Be Thrilled to Have a First-Century Gospel Fragment

Here again, from years ago, some reflections on the importance of having a first-century manuscript -- even if it DID NOT change much of anything we think or know. ******************** In several posts I have been emphasizing – possibly over-emphasizing – that if a first-century fragment of the Gospel of Mark does ever get published, and if it is in *fact*from the first century (which, I should stress, will be almost *impossible* to demonstrate conclusively), that it is very hard indeed to imagine that it will be any kind of game-changer, that it will tell us something different from what we already think. The reason I have been emphasizing this is because the evangelical Christian scholars who are making the headlines with their declarations about the discovery will almost certainly, once it is published, if it ever gets published, claim that it is evidence for their view that we can know what the original text says. See! We have a FIRST-CENTURY MANUSCRIPT!!! So, consider these posts of mine as a kind of prophylaxis [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:08:16-04:00July 24th, 2024|Public Forum|

How Would a First-Century Fragment of the Gospels Actually Change What We Know/Think?
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How Would a First-Century Fragment of the Gospels Actually Change What We Know/Think?

Public Forum

How Would a First-Century Fragment of the Gospels Actually Change What We Know/Think?

Here I give a post from 2015, some three years after it was announced that we now have a first-century fragmentary copy of Mark. At this point we still had not SEEN the manuscript and no one would give us any reliable information about it. And I began to wonder, how much difference would it make in how we understand things, assuming it really was a first-century fragment. Here are my musings at the time. ****************************** Assuming, as it is *relatively*, but not absolutely probable that we should, that the fragment in question is simply of a few verses in the middle of Mark’s Gospel that do not vary significantly from what we already have, I’m still obsessing with the question of why evangelical scholars would be so bound and determined to get their hands on it. I’ll deal with that question first. It may not be obvious why it is a puzzle. Here is why. As a rule (a rule to which I do not know a single exception), evangelical scholars of [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:08:16-04:00July 23rd, 2024|Public Forum|

Would It Matter if We DID Have a First-Century Manuscript of Mark?

I will continue here with select reposts of the first-century copy of Mark fiasco, in light of my recent interview in the topic and my now renewed interest in the issues involved. (See the previous posts if you're not aware of the claims from 12 years ago that one had been discovered.) I personally think that there are no shenanigans going on when Dan Wallace tells us that a fragment of the Gospel of Mark has been found and that it can, with reasonable certainty, be dated to the late first century. I’m not saying that I know he is right. Far from it. In fact, one of the most disconcerting things about this claim is that they are not making the papyrus available so real experts can study it and let us know what it really is and to what period it can be dated. But let’s suppose that once it is published – now the date is no longer 2012, as originally stated, or 2015 as stated last week, but 2017 or later, [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:08:16-04:00July 21st, 2024|Public Forum|

More on the Initial Debacle on First-Century Mark (in relation to the Dead Sea Scrolls)

In my previous post -- originally put up on the blog in April 2012 -- I explained how in a debate I had in February of that year, evangelical New Testament scholar and textual critic Dan Wallace to my surprise (shock!) announced that now for the first time we actually have a copy of the Gospel of Mark from the first century, not long after the book was written, and that it confirms what he has said all along, that we have the original text of the New Testament. But he wouldn't tell us anything about the copy -- how big it was, who established its date, whether the date had been corroborated, etc. Here I continue, again from the post in 2012, edited a bit. ************************** Over the two months since the debate Dan has been repeatedly asked for more information, and he will not give it. I don’t know if he owns the manuscript, if he has seen the manuscript, if it is his book that will contain information about [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:08:15-04:00July 20th, 2024|Bart's Debates, New Testament Manuscripts|

The Parables! Have You Signed up for the Course? (This weekend!)
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The Parables! Have You Signed up for the Course? (This weekend!)

Public Forum

The Parables! Have You Signed up for the Course? (This weekend!)

No time to wait! If you haven't signed up for the course on Jesus' Parables, you should maybe reflect a bit on Matthew 25:1-13. Well, not exactly. If you don't come live, you can purchase the course as a recording. But if you do come live you'll get the recording for life, and why not hear it in the flesh? I'm tellin' you, this'll be a good one. Amy-Jill Levine?! On the Parables of Jesus?!? How good can it get? Here's my original announcement from last month. ******************** I'm really excited about this one. We will be presenting a new remote course on the Parables of Jesus, consisting of four lectures by Amy-Jill Levine. Amy-Jill is one of the top scholars on the historical Jesus and the Gospels on the planet, and is an unusually interesting and dynamic lecturer. If you heard her at the New Insights into the New Testament last year, or taken a Great Courses/Wondrium course with her, you'll know what I mean. She is unusually sharp, witty, clear, engaged, challenging, and [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:08:16-04:00July 18th, 2024|Public Forum|

The Debacle Over the First-Century Copy of Mark

This morning I had a long interview with BBC4 (radio) in London about a new book that is coming out by renowned expert in ancient manuscripts (mainly classical) Roberta Mazza, that deals at length with the debacle over the alleged first-century copy of the Gospel of Mark. It was a debacle because it was based on bogus claims. I was intimately connected with the beginning of the affair back in 2012, and in looking over the blog see I haven't dealt with it at any length for many years. I've decided to repost a series of blogs that spanned eight years to show how the whole thing unfolded. It took that long for the truth to come out. Here is the first post I made (with a few edits), published about two months after the rather unpleasant business began. ************************** On February 1 [2012] I had a public debate in Chapel Hill with Daniel Wallace, a conservative evangelical Christian New Testament scholar who teaches at that bastion of conservative dispensationalist theology, Dallas [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:08:15-04:00July 18th, 2024|Bart's Debates, New Testament Manuscripts|

What If Another Christianity Had Won?

If only one form of early Christianity won the contest for domination, what were the results -- what the gains and losses from that "triumph"? And what would have happened to world history if things had gone in another direction? This is my third and final post on my book Lost Christianities, taken from its Introduction (Oxford Press, 2003). ******************************* The Stakes of the Conflict Before launching into the investigation, I should perhaps say a word about what is, or at least what was, at stake. Throughout the course of our study I will be asking the question: what if it had been otherwise? What if some other form of Christianity had become dominant, instead of the one that did?[1] In anticipation of these discussions, I can point out that if some other form of Christianity had won the early struggles for dominance, the familiar doctrines of Christianity may never have become the “standard” belief of millions of people around the world – including the belief that there is only one God, [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:08:15-04:00July 17th, 2024|Book Discussions, Heresy and Orthodoxy, History of Christianity (100-300CE)|

More Lost Christianities
Gallery
More Lost Christianities

Book Discussions, Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE), History of Christianity (100-300CE)

More Lost Christianities

In my previous post I discussed the wide variety of early Christianities and their ranging views. Here I consider some aspects of the Scriptures known and used by these various groups. Again, this comes from the Introduction to my book Lost Christianities (Oxford Press, 2003). ****************************** The Lost Scriptures The Gospels that came to be included in the New Testament were all written anonymously: only at a later time were they called by the names of their reputed authors, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. But at about the time these names were being associated with the Gospels, other Gospel books were becoming available, sacred texts that were read and revered by different Christian groups throughout the world: a Gospel, for example, claiming to be written by Jesus’ closest disciple, Simon Peter; another by his apostle Philip; a Gospel allegedly written by Jesus’ female disciple Mary Magdalen; another by his own twin brother, Didymus Judas Thomas.[1] Someone decided that four of these early Gospels, and no others, should be accepted as part of the canon [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:07:58-04:00July 16th, 2024|Book Discussions, Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE), History of Christianity (100-300CE)|

Lost Christianities

How diverse was early Christianity? I had been transfixed by this question for a long time when I decided to write a trade book, Lost Christianities. It was a blast to write and in some ways launched my career of writing for general audiences. My earlier book Jesus, Apocalyptic Prophet was definitely directed to that crowd, but it was with Lost Christianities that I started kicking broader communication to a wider readership into gear. Here's I'll excerpt by explanation of the book in its Introduction (from Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew. Oxford University Press, 2003). This will take three posts. ********************* It may be difficult to imagine a religious phenomenon more diverse than modern-day Christianity. There are Roman Catholic missionaries in developing countries, who devote themselves to voluntary poverty for the sake of others, and evangelical televangelists with twelve-step programs to assure financial success and prosperity. There are New England Presbyterians and Appalachian snake handlers. There are Greek orthodox priests committed to the liturgical service of God, replete with set [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:07:58-04:00July 14th, 2024|Book Discussions, Christian Apocrypha, Heresy and Orthodoxy|

More Lost Scriptures

How did we get our books of the New Testament, and what do we know about the ones that were "left out"? Here I continue my Introduction to my book Lost Scriptures, as started in my previous post. ****************************** When was this New Testament finally collected and authorized? The first instance we have of any Christian author urging that our current twenty-seven books, and only these twenty-seven, should be accepted as Scripture occurred in the year 367 CE, in a letter written by the powerful bishop of Alexandria Egypt, Athanasius. Even then the matter was not finally resolved, however, as different churches, even within the orthodox form of Christianity, had different ideas -- for example, about whether the Apocalypse of John could be accepted as Scripture (it finally was, of course), or whether the Apocalypse of Peter should be (it was not); whether the epistle of Hebrews should be included (it was) or the epistle of Barnabas (it was not); and so on. In other words, the debates lasted over three hundred years. [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:07:58-04:00July 13th, 2024|Book Discussions, Christian Apocrypha, Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE)|

A Remembrance of John Shelby Spong–Platinum Post By Ray Zubler

I am pleased to be able to post this post by platinum member Ray Zubler; it is a recollection/commemoration of John Shelby Spong, whom many of you know of as one of the great voices that spread criitical knowledge of the Bible and early Christianity to broader audiences. Spong was a bishop of the Episcopal Church who nonetheless realized the deep problems posed by the Bible and traditional theological views for modern thinking people. Spong discussed these issues *within* the context of the Christian church as a Christian church leader, and so he reached a large number of Christians who would pay no attention to critical scholars on the outside. Ray has here presented some very helpful reflections on him and his work. Remember: you too can present a Platinum Post to Platnium Members as a Platinum yourself! Anything related to what we do works! Let me know if you're at all interested -- or just send us a post. ****************************** “Faith can never rest on perceptions that are intellectually unbelievable.” – John Shelby Spong [...]

Diane2025-09-10T13:07:57-04:00July 12th, 2024|Public Forum|

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