Page 45 – The Bart Ehrman Blog

That’s in the New Testament, Right? An Interesting Non-Canonical Story.

Here's a Gospel story about Jesus and a leper. Does it sound familiar? And behold, a leper approached him and said, “Teacher Jesus, while I was traveling with some lepers and eating with them at the inn, I myself contracted leprosy. If, then, you are willing, I will be made clean.” Then the Lord said to him, “I am willing: be clean.” Immediately the leprosy left him. Jesus said to him, “Go, show yourself to the priests and make an offering for your cleansing as Moses commanded; and sin no more....” This may sound like the Bible, but it’s not. This is one of the stories found in a document known to scholars as Papyrus Egerton 2. This papyrus consists of four small pieces of papyrus manuscript, written on front and back (so it comes from a codex, not a scroll). It contains four different stories: (1) an exhortation by Jesus for his Jewish opponents to “search the Scriptures” (in terms similar to John 5:39-47 and 10:31-39); (2) a foiled attempt to stone and then [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:04:43-04:00September 17th, 2023|Canonical Gospels, Christian Apocrypha|

About Those Ebionites and Their Peculiar Gospel

There are other interesting features of the Gospel of the Ebionites, known from the quotations of Epiphanius, the fourth-century heresiologist (= heresy-hunter). We wish we had the whole Gospel. We have only these eight fragments that Epiphanius quotes. We wish we knew who actually used the Gospel. We wish we knew how long it was, what it contained, and what its theological slant was. It is almost impossible to say from what remains. One big question is whether, since it was used by the Ebionites according to Epiphanius, it had a particular bias in its reporting of the words and deeds of Jesus. The term “Ebionite” was widely used in proto-orthodox and orthodox sources to refer to “Jewish-Christian” groups, or at least one group (it is likely that there were lots of these groups, and it may be that the church fathers assumed they were all the same group when in fact they had different views, different theologies, different practices, and so on). Some of the church fathers indicate that the name came from [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:04:43-04:00September 16th, 2023|Christian Apocrypha, Heresy and Orthodoxy|

Paul, the Apostate: a Platinum Post by Manuel Fiadeiro

I'm pleased to present this Platinum Members guestpost by your fellow platinum member Manuel Fiadeiro, a retelling of the conversion and mission of the apostle Paul, with intriguing possibilities. What do you make of it? Let Manuel and the rest of us know! And remember that you too can publish a Platinum post to your fellow Plats. Just send something along to me! ******************************** Circa 35 CE, on the outskirts of Jerusalem, a young man, no more than 20 years old called Saul, with scribes and Pharisees, was stoning a man belonging to a sect of a Galilean called Jesus. Saul was in Jerusalem to study with the Pharisee master Gamaliel. Few students could match Saul in intelligence, brilliance and knowledge. He was a devout Jew who knew the scriptures by heart, fluent in Greek and Hebrew, able to read and write, he could beat anyone in theological discourse. Saul was also an ambitious fellow. He "knew" God set him apart from his mother's womb. He wondered what God had in mind for him. [...]

Diane2025-09-10T13:05:56-04:00September 15th, 2023|Public Forum|

Locusts or Pancakes? The Dietary Preferences of John the Baptist.

Among the eight quotations of the Gospel of the Ebionites in the writings of Epiphanius, none is more interesting that the one in which he describes John the Baptist. Its humorous side may not be evident at first glance. Here is what he says could be found in the Gospel: And so John was baptizing, and Pharisees came out to him and were baptized, as was all of Jerusalem. John wore a garment of camel hair and a leather belt around his waist; and his food was wild honey that tasted like manna, like a cake cooked in olive oil. (Epiphanius, Panarion, 30, 13, 4-5) What has long struck investigators is that John here is not said to be eating locusts and honey, but honey that tasted like manna , like a cake cooked in oil. That is, a pancake. That is interesting, and somewhat amusing, for two reasons. The first is that to *make* this alteration in the account found in the Gospels of the NT, the author (whoever he was) of the [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:04:27-04:00September 14th, 2023|Canonical Gospels, Christian Apocrypha|

Contradictions? What Contradictions? Harmonizing the Gospels.

In my previous post I indicated that one of the quotations of the Gospel of the Ebionites, as preserved in the writings of Epiphanius, appears to represent some kind of harmonization of the Gospels, an attempt to explain how the three different versions of what the voice from heaven says at Jesus’ baptism can *all* be right (since the voice says different things in each of the three Gospels). Solution: the voice spoke *three* times, saying something different each time (!). This way of solving discrepancies in the Gospels has persisted through the ages. Most people don’t realize that it goes way back to the early church. I’ll say more about that eventually. For now I want to say something about it in modern times. When I was in college – as a good hard-core fundamentalist who did not think there could be any real discrepancies in the Gospels (since they were inspired by God, which means there could be no mistakes, which means there could be no contradictions) – I was an expert at [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:04:27-04:00September 13th, 2023|Canonical Gospels, Christian Apocrypha|

A Conference on the Gospels for Non-Scholars!
Gallery
A Conference on the Gospels for Non-Scholars!

Public Forum

A Conference on the Gospels for Non-Scholars!

I'm getting very excited about the upcoming remote conference I'll be hosting next week, Sept. 23-24. I've mentioned it before on the blog, and here I thought I could give you a better taste of what it will involve. It is called "New Insights into the New Testament" and will entail ten 50-minute lectures by ten top-level scholars on various aspects of the Gospels -- all directed toward *non-scholars*. Each lecture will be followed by a live Q&A with attendees. Below I give a brief summary of the lectures to whet your appetite. The event is not connected with the blog per se, except to the extent that I'm doing both things and many of you will be interested in it. For fuller information, about what it will be about and how to register go here: https://www.bartehrman.com/new-insights-conference/ The event will begin with a thirty-minute lecture (by me) that summarizes the history of modern biblical scholarship (600 years in 30 minutes!). And then this is the two-day line up. Candida Moss (University Of Birmingham) BAD [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:04:27-04:00September 12th, 2023|Public Forum|

The Pauline Style and a Discussion About Paul’s Motivation. A Platinum Post From Omar Robb

Here are some reflections on the homiletic style Paul uses in his letters, with some much broader implications for understanding Paul's situation and teaching by Platinum Post member Omar Robb. Feel free to comment and provide feedback! ****************************** I need to be upfront and clearly say that this article is just a rough set of assumptions. In order for this article to jump over this level then it would require adequate linguistic and textual analyses and I am not an expert on them. So, I am just exploring here an area, and I am throwing a flashlight deep into the dark field. The outcome might be fruitful or might not. But it is always fun exploring the unknown past. Having said all that, let us start the discussion: There is something that I did notice before (as I think all did) but I couldn’t put the line under it, except lately. There is a specific common approach that most Christian Preachers follow in their preaching, and I think I am able now to describe it: [...]

Diane2025-09-10T13:03:15-04:00September 11th, 2023|Public Forum|

The Apocryphal Gospels By and For Jewish Christians

Among the non-canonical (apocryphal) Gospels are three that are usually grouped together and called “Jewish-Christian Gospels.” These are very tricky texts to deal with. We don’t have any manuscripts of them – even small fragments. They come to us, instead, in isolated quotations of church fathers such as Origen, Didymus the Blind, Jerome, and Epiphanius. These (orthodox) church fathers sometimes quoted or referred to one or the other of the Gospels in order to relate what it said; and sometimes it was in order to attack what it said. There are all sorts of questions raised about the no-longer-surviving Gospels in these quotations. A good part of the problem is that some of these fathers – especially Jerome, on whom we depend for most of our information for two of the three Gospels – quite obviously confused things, or were confused themselves in what they had to say, since what they have to say about these Gospels doesn’t add up and in the end doesn’t make sense. On this every scholar who works on these [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:04:27-04:00September 10th, 2023|Canonical Gospels, Christian Apocrypha|

Want to Study the Early Christian Apocrypha?

There are some topics that I deal with on the blog that give me a knot in the stomach just to broach -- including the question of whether Jesus was really buried on the afternoon of his death (my recent long thread). The issues are so convoluted and so many people disagree that I wonder, yeah, Why am I doing this? (!) But there are other topics that for me are almost sheer pleasure--like the one I'll be embarking on now for a new thread: the Gospels, epistles, and apocalypses that are NOT in the New Testament. I've talked about these on and off over the years, and thought it was time to get back to them. I regularly get asked by blog members where they can go to learn more about them. And so I thought I'd start this threat by reposting some of the crucial information. Want to know how my grad students study these things? Want to take it on yourself? Here's a copy of my syllabus for the PhD Seminar that [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:04:27-04:00September 9th, 2023|Canonical Gospels, Christian Apocrypha, Public Forum|

Jesus, Sun Myung Moon, and Me: a Platinum Post from William Poe

******************************* A bit of introduction may be in order. I grew up in a conservative Southern Baptist church. My family wasn’t especially religious, but we often attended Sunday sermons and not least due to peer pressure, I was baptized when I was nine years old. As a teen, and without much resistance from my parents, I became interested in more spiritualist approaches to religion. By age fifteen, I had read all the books about Edgar Cayce, and other contemporary mystics. My readings led me to question the foundations of Christianity. I had concerns that Christians seemed unwilling to address. I continually asked, what if the first-century Jews had accepted Jesus and protected him against Roman authorities, what then. The answer was always that it wasn’t God’s will. I found that unsatisfying. As an eighteen-year-old freshman at university, I studied anthropology and, in another class, became aware of Abraham Maslow and his proposal that people strive for self-actualization. The mix of spiritualism, anthropology, and psychology contributed to my openness to proponents of the new religious [...]

Diane2025-09-10T13:04:26-04:00September 8th, 2023|Public Forum|

A Hugely Memorable Moment: When I Saw Codex Sinaiticus

In my last post I began to relate an anecdote about a traveling adventure I had several years ago, when giving lectures for a UNC trip to Egypt and Jordan with a stop at the famed St. Catherine’s monastery in the southern part of the Sinai peninsula, the place where Tischendorf had discovered the biblical manuscript Codex Sinaiticus in the mid 19th century, and where a fire at the monastery in the 1970s had uncovered a hidden room found to contain manuscripts, including the pages from the Old Testament of the Codex Sinaiticus that Tischendorf had not come away with from the monastery when he took the bulk of the manuscript with him back to Russian. (Now THAT'S a long sentence!) For me, one of the highlights of this trip was to be a visit to the monastery, a place that I had wanted to see for years. It is located in a completely barren location in the wilderness and is the one and only thing to see in the entire region. It’s not the [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:04:27-04:00September 7th, 2023|Bart’s Biography, New Testament Manuscripts|

September Gold Q&A–Get Those Questions in!

Whoa, is it time for another Gold Q&A already? Yep, it sure is! Send your questions to [email protected], and Diane will compile and send me the list. Short deadline this month--get your question in by Friday (9/8) midnight (whenever midnight is in your time zone). The questions are always interesting, but remember that shorter, more general-interest questions are more likely to be answered.

Diane2025-09-10T13:04:44-04:00September 6th, 2023|Public Forum|

My Trip to Saint Catherine’s Monastery on Mount Sinai: Discovery Site of Codex Sinaiticus

In my previous post I talked about Constantin von Tischendorf and his discovery of the Codex Sinaiticus in St. Catherine’s Monastery on the Sinai peninsula in 1844 and then 1859. I have a personal anecdote to relate about the manuscript, one of the most interesting things ever to happen to me on my various travels hither and yon. To make sense of the anecdote I need to provide some background information. As I indicated in my previous post, when Tischendorf discovered the codex Sinaiticus (as it was later called), he considered it to be the most ancient biblical manuscript then known to exist. He was right. It was. Tischendorf claimed that the manuscript was gifted to him by the head of the monastery. The monastery later claimed, and still claims to this day, that he stole it from them. The manuscript consists of both the Old Testament and the New Testament (all in Greek). It is generally dated today to the middle of the fourth Christian century. Since Tischendorf’s day, many much older manuscripts have [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:04:27-04:00September 6th, 2023|History of Biblical Scholarship, New Testament Manuscripts|

The Discovery of Codex Sinaiticus: One of the Most Important Manuscripts of the New Testament
Gallery
The Discovery of Codex Sinaiticus: One of the Most Important Manuscripts of the New Testament

History of Biblical Scholarship, New Testament Manuscripts

The Discovery of Codex Sinaiticus: One of the Most Important Manuscripts of the New Testament

Last week my two teenage granddaughters (TEENAGE GRANDDAUGHTERS?? Yikes. How'd this happen to me...?) were visiting us in London, their first time there. We did tons of great tourist stuff, and it was fantastic. One of the things we did is take them to the public exhibition of manuscripts at the British Library, and among the amazing things there -- Leonardo Da Vinci notebooks, the Magna Carta, Beatles songs written on envelopes and scrap paper, Lewis Carroll's own copy of Alice in Wonderland, etc. etc. -- is the very famous Codex Sinaiticus, the oldest complete copy of the New Testament in existence, dating from around 370 CE or so. I showed my granddaughters and explained a bit. They're not Bible geeks (oh boy are they not), but still, it was impressive. It made me think that I should talk about it a bit here and its remarkable discovery here on the blog. It was found by probably a scholar who was almost certainly the most intrepid of manuscript-hunters of modern times, Constantine von Tischendorf. His [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:04:27-04:00September 5th, 2023|History of Biblical Scholarship, New Testament Manuscripts|

Mark 13:30–a New Argument for an Old Hypothesis. A Platinum Post From Omar Robb

In this Platinum Guest Post Omar Robb takes on one of the most controversial verses in the Gospels for which every interpretation is controversial and argues for an interpretation that is ... controversial. Do you find it convincing? Let's hear you say so! Do you not? Let's hear you say why! The question: did Jesus state that his own generation would see the end of all things as we know them? Or not? ****************************** There is a hypothesis that Mark 13:30 (this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened) is related to the destruction of the Temple. This is not a new hypothesis, and there are few articles in the internet that promote it. However, this hypothesis didn’t gain any momentum, and it is highly ignored by both Believers and Non-Believers. I assume that this hypothesis could indicate a partial fulfillment to the prophecy of Jesus, which most Believers couldn’t accept; as Jesus’ prophecies couldn’t have any failures. While many Non-Believers couldn’t also accept it; as Jesus’ prophecies couldn’t even [...]

Diane2025-09-10T13:03:15-04:00September 4th, 2023|Public Forum|

Does Archaeological Evidence Show that Jesus Was Buried on the Day He Died?

[Note: this post originally appeared in 2014; since then the skeletal remains of another victim of crucifixion have appeared in England; to my knowledge, the new discovery does not affect either Craig's argument or my response here] ****************************** I plan to make this the last post responding to Craig Evans’s article, “Getting the Burial Traditions and Evidences Right,” in which he attempts to refute my argument in How Jesus Became God, that Jesus was probably not given a decent burial on the day of his crucifixion. I have dealt with a wide range of Craig’s arguments, and have saved his two strongest arguments for last. In my last post I dealt with the claim of Josephus that Jews (always? usually? sometimes?) buried crucifixion victims before sunset, and I showed that as a general statement it simply isn’t true, and argued that in any event it would not have applied to a case such as that of Jesus, one who was crucified as an enemy of the state. Today I deal with the second argument that [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:04:26-04:00September 3rd, 2023|Canonical Gospels, Greco-Roman Religions and Culture, Historical Jesus, Public Forum|

Josephus’ One Statement About the Burial of Crucified Victims in Judea

We come now, at last, to the best argument in Craig Evans’ arsenal, in his attack on the views of Jesus’ burial that I set forth in in How Jesus Became God. Tomorrow I will deal with the second best – an argument from archaeology. Craig makes a somewhat bigger deal of the second best; in fact he throws off this, his best argument rather quickly. But it’s the most important point of the many (many!) issues he raises. The argument is this. In one passage of Josephus’s writings, in an extremely brief few words (it’s only half of one sentence) (this is the only half sentence in the entire corpus not only of Josephus’s 30 volumes of writing but in the entire corpus of pagan and Jewish literature of all of antiquity that makes this claim) he explicitly indicates that Jews buried victims of crucifixion before sunset. Craig’s commentary on the passage amounts only to two sentences. At the end of the day I don’t find even this piece of evidence persuasive, and [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:04:26-04:00September 2nd, 2023|Canonical Gospels, Greco-Roman Religions and Culture, Historical Jesus|

Thoughts on Cosmology, a Platinum Post From Charles Hawkins

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 [...]

Diane2025-09-10T13:05:56-04:00September 1st, 2023|Public Forum|

Bogus Arguments for Disbelief

I can completely understand why some people choose not to believe in the Christian tradition, since I too am not a Christian. But I find it a bit dismaying when people reject aspects of the Christian tradition for (literally) illogical reasons. Or even worse, attack it for illogical reasons. This often involves drawing unfounded religious conclusions from historical findings. I’m sensitive to the issue because these findings are often ones that I myself talk about (findings of others that I subscribe to after looking into them). My view is that there are good reasons for some people to hold on to their faith, and there are good reasons for other people to decide to leave the faith or never to come to faith in the first place. But why do we need Bogus Arguments for Disbelief? (Acronym: BAD) I’ll give here three examples, knowing full well that many people will object to them, especially the first one (since people regularly do, here on the blog!). I don’t mean to be slamming anyone or their beliefs; [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:04:26-04:00August 31st, 2023|Reflections and Ruminations|

How Relevant is Josephus for Knowing What Happened to the Body of Jesus?

In my previous post I began to deal with the first of two arguments that Craig Evans provides from Josephus. Craig wants to argue that Josephus, a first-century Jewish authority, explicitly indicates that Romans allowed Jews to provide decent burials for their dead. In this first argument Craig provides a concatenation of passages from Josephus that together, Craig argues, indicate that Jews would not leave a corpse (such as that of Jesus) on the cross, but would provide a burial for it. Here is the argument again. “Josephus asserts the same thing. The Romans, he says, do not require “their subjects to violate their national laws” (Against Apion 2.73). The Jewish historian and adds that the Roman procurators who succeeded Agrippa I “by abstaining from all interference with the customs of the country kept the nation at peace...” (Jewish War 2.220) "... customs that included never leaving a “corpse unburied” (Against Apion 2.211). I dealt with the first quotation in yesterday’s post, where I pointed out that in Against Apion Josephus is not referring to [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:04:25-04:00August 30th, 2023|Public Forum|

Previous 1···444546···218 Next