Like many of you, I'm fascinated by how ancient people understood the world / universe -- the "cosmos" -- and by what modern cosmologist who actually do the science say about it.  Only rarely can someone speak confidently about both topics, wildly different as they are.  So I'm pleased to publish this Platinum guest post by Charles Hawkins, which discusses cosmology in antiquity and modernity and the transition betwixt them, all in relation to the NT.  In ONE post!  I hope you enjoy it!  Charles will be happy to hear your reactions. ****************************** Understanding cosmology, that is, our view of the structure of the Earth and its place in the universe, is an essential part of understanding the writings of both the Hebrew Bible and the Christian documents of the New Testament.  More importantly, this understanding is a key (there are others) to working out how if at all these writings can be relevant to our era.  Members of this blog may well be aware of much of what follows, but I’ve thought for some [...]

      I'm getting pumped about/for my new online course on the Gospel of Matthew, this coming weekend (Feb 3-4), and want to make sure you know about it before ... well, the End is Near.   I have the lectures all drawn up, the Powerpoints made, and now it's just a bit of fine tuning before we go live.  If you haven't signed up, but think you might be interested, check it out here:  https://ehrman.thrivecart.com/matthew/ The course will be eight lectures, four on Saturday and four on Sunday.  I'll be covering tons of stuff I've never discussed on the blog or, as it turns out, in any public lecture.  Go figure.  Those who sign up for the course will have life-time access to it (we'll publish it with Suggestions for Further Reading, Questions for Reflection, and so on, and participants will receive it automatically). Please remember, you can get a discount on the course by using the code BLOG5.   A portion of the proceeds of the course will be donated to the blog.   Here are [...]

My next book will be dealing with how the teachings of Jesus transformed the understanding of what it meant to live a good life and to be a good person in the Western world.  One of the most important areas I'll be focusing on is Jesus' emphasis on going out of one's way to help those in need -- not just family and friends, but even complete strangers.  What we think of as privately funded charities, governmental support of the needy, and individual assistance for those we hear about virtually didn't exist in the pagan/polytheistic world of the Roman empire before then.   It exists big time now, and it almost certainly would not have happened apart from the influence of Jesus' followers, as Christianity became the dominant religion of the West and transformed culture, society, and government.  And now this commitment to help others in need seems rooted in our DNA (well, obviously not in all of us!), whether we identify as Christian or not.    The original motivation for the Bart Ehrman Blog was [...]

Yesterday I put out a post that involved Psalm 8, one of the great passages of the Old Testament.  And I remembered that I posted a reflection on it many years ago, since it had made me think about something, well, rather significant: where we (I) fit into the universe.  OK then!  I've decided to come back to it here, because it still sometimes reflects in my head. Here is the psalm in the (non-inclusive) King James Version, which, as it turns out, is the way I memorized it when oh so much younger than I am now: 1 O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! who hast set thy glory above the heavens. 2 Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger. 3 When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; 4 What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and [...]

This post explains one of the real faux pas of the NRSV Bible translation, which, I regret to say, was not corrected in the new "updated edition."  It involves an unfortunate attempt to use inclusive language where it is misleading, and in this case, makes almost nonsense of the passage in question. But it's a very tricky issue.  It involves a quotation of an Old Testament Psalm in the New Testament, where the Old Testament passage is understandably rendered inclusively to include both men and women, but where its citation in the New Testament makes no sense when rendered inclusively.  It appears to be a problem that the translators of both the original NRSV and of the updated version didn't notice or, at least in my judgment, take seriously enough. 3 When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; 4 What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? 5 For thou hast made him a [...]

The blog has done extremely well this past year, thanks to you the members and the core of people who work to keep it going.  Here on our annual last day I’d like to take look back on what has happened and talk a bit about what lies ahead. I’m particularly pleased that we have continued to meet our two goals for the blog, which drove us to start it over eleven years ago now: To provide scholarly knowledge about the historical Jesus, the New Testament, and the other Christian writings of the first three or four centuries to a broad non-scholarly audience. To raise money for charities while doing it, highly reputable, responsible, and effective organizations that deal with hunger, homelessness, disaster relief, and literacy. To start with the charity: once more we have done extremely well, having distributed (as of today) just over $480,000.  To put that into a bit of perspective, our first full year of operation, exactly ten years ago, we raised $54,000.  I’m no mathematician, but by my count that’s [...]