Page 48 – The Bart Ehrman Blog

Announcing a NEW (Free!) Course: Why I Am Not A Christian

I am happy to announce that I will be doing a new course, Why I Am Not a Christian: How Leaving the Faith Led to a Life of More Meaning and Purpose. I explain it all below, but as spoilers: it is July 23, it will involve four talks and a Q&A, and it is free. You can sign up for it at bartehrman.com/lifeafterfaith The course will be unlike any other I have given in any context. It will indeed cover major issues involving the New Testament, early Christianity, and the formation of the Christian religion. But it will also be deeply personal and autobiographical. I became a scholar because of my Christian faith; then my Christian faith changed because of my scholarship. My “quest for truth” led me to evangelical Christianity; and then – as I grew, matured, learned, and reflected – it led me to away from the Christian faith. In this course of lectures I explain how it all happened and discuss what the results were – for my scholarship, my understanding [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:03:53-04:00July 10th, 2023|Public Forum|

Vespasian Miracles. A Platinum Post by Ryan Fleming

I'm pleased to post this discussion of the miracles attributed to the emperor Vespasian, by Platinum blog member Ryan Fleming. These miracles are not widely known outside the realm of antiquity nerds, and rarely are they much analyzed even there. But they are significant and interesting, and here Ryan provides an intriguing assessment of them. Enjoy! **************************** Roman historians Tacitus (56 CE to 120 CE) in The Histories, Book IV, Section 81, and Suetonius (69 CE to 122 CE) in The Lives of the Twelve Caesars wrote of miracles Vespasian performed in the temple of Serapis in Alexandria Egypt. In one case he healed a blind man by anointing his eyes with his spit, and in another he healed a paralyzed man (withered hand or leg) by touching the hand or leg. It is tempting practice to compare these miracles with nearly identical acts attributed to Jesus in the Canonical Gospels and debate which came first, the Jesus stories or Vespasian stories: Curing blindness with spit: Mark 8:23-25, John 9:6-7 Curing blindness: Matthew 9:29-30, [...]

Diane2025-09-10T13:03:38-04:00July 10th, 2023|Public Forum|

More on the Life of Brian and the Historical Jesus

This is second of three installments of the paper I read at the Life of Brian and the Historical Jesus conference. In this portion I deal with an issue that I have been spending a lot of time reading and thinking about over the years: the value of eyewitness testimony for establishing what really happened in the past. The reflections here are inspired by the first episode of Brian's adulthood in the film, where he is present, at a distance, at Jesus' famous Sermon on the Mount, and the people around Brian cannot make out exactly what Jesus is saying since they are so far away from him. Rather than "Blessed are the Peacemakers," Jesus is thought to have said "Blessed are the Cheesemakers"; and it was the Greek, not the meek, who will inherit the earth. And so it goes. It's the sort of scene that is both funny and insightful -- what *was* it like to hear a public speaker back in the days before there were microphones??? To deal with [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:03:38-04:00July 9th, 2023|Jesus and Film, Public Forum|

Blog Dinner in London, Tuesday July 25. Interested?

I am in London for the summer and would like to do another small dinner with active blog members on Tuesday, July 25, 2023. Possibly a pint in advance. This time it will be on my home-away-from-home turf, Wimbledon, specifics TBD. You interested? If we can get 3-4 folk, and no more than 7, people together, I'd be happy to do it. If more then 7 reply, I'll take the first 7. No obligations other than: Being a blog member Showing up Talking Paying for whatever you ingest. Whatever you exgest is free. If you're interested, do NOT reply here as a comment. Send me an email at [email protected]. Hope it happens!

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:03:38-04:00July 8th, 2023|Public Forum|

The Life of Brian and the Historical Jesus

A couple of weeks ago we had a very fun Movie Club as a fundraiser for the blog, trying to raise funds to cover our operating expenses, since all the membership fees and any regular donations that come in go directly to our charities -- but we still have to pay our bills! This one was on the Life of Brian. Have you seen it? If not, you should. If you've seen it ten times, you should see it eleven. During our discussion of the film I pointed out that there was a conference in London some years ago to celebrate the 35th anniversary of its release -- a group of academics specializing in New Testament and/or ancient Judaism reading serious papers (often with some humor) about the relevance of their field for the film, and vice versa. Seriously. (John Cleese came to the conference and thought the whole thing was outrageously funny and great fun -- a group of academics discussing a film he and his Monty Python buds had come up with. He [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:03:37-04:00July 8th, 2023|Historical Jesus, Jesus and Film, Public Forum, Video Media|

What Is (Sexually) “Unnatural”?

Are sex acts other than those between a man and a woman “unnatural”? Very few people ever bother to reflect on what the term “natural” means or how one decides what an “unnatural might be – and what makes it unnatural. Almost everyone simply assumes that we each have a conscience; that our consciences basically tell all of us the same things; that there are some things we know are wrong, without needing anyone tell us; and – for a large segment of the population -- certain gender identifications and sexual activities are simply “unnatural” and therefore “wrong.” Sometimes arguments are invoked, but usually arguments are not actually thought out and reasoned; they are simply ad hoc constructions designed to convince people who are already convinced. Most commonly, at least in the world I grew up in, the argument against same-sex relations, for example, was simply about the plumbing. Men aren’t made to have sex with men or women with women. It’s just kinda biologically obvious, right? Penises were made for vaginas. The variant on [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:03:37-04:00July 6th, 2023|Public Forum|

How the Bible Can Help Those in Pain — Even Non-Believers. Guest Post by Glenn Siepert
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How the Bible Can Help Those in Pain — Even Non-Believers. Guest Post by Glenn Siepert

Book Discussions, Public Forum

How the Bible Can Help Those in Pain — Even Non-Believers. Guest Post by Glenn Siepert

Are you interested in seeing how the Bible can be important and meaningful even for those of us who do not believe? Glenn Siepert is one of our Blog Volunteers, who provides graphics for our public posts; he has just published a very interesting book for which I wrote a blurb (endorsement) for the cover. Glenn Siepert has an interesting background and story to tell, and he uses his book to help others think about their own stories in light of the biblical narratives, showing how this is a crucially important way to read the Bible – even for those who don’t (or no longer) believe in its literal truth. Glenn’s moving book is called Emerging from the Rubble: Thirty Stories about Grief, Shattered Dreams, Broken Relationships, and Finding the Courage to Keep Going. I’ve asked Glenn to provide us some blog posts explaining the book and its background in his own life. Here's the first: ****************************** A little about me - I grew up in the world of Christian Fundamentalism. How "fundy" was I, [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:03:37-04:00July 4th, 2023|Book Discussions, Public Forum|

June 2023 Gold Q&A (video)

Hello, Gold & Platinum friends! Here's a video of me recording the June Gold Q&A in ancient Rome--or, maybe...?

Diane2025-09-10T13:03:38-04:00July 2nd, 2023|Public Forum|

The (Lost) Greater Questions of Mary (Rated R) (X?)

In my last post I mentioned Gospels that we know about because they are mentioned, or even quoted, by church fathers, but that no longer survive. A second, particularly intriguing, Gospel like this – one that I desperately wish we had, for reasons that will soon become clear -- is known as “The Greater Questions of Mary” (i.e., of Mary Magdalene). One of the “great questions” for scholars is whether such a book ever really did exist. It is mentioned only once in ancient literature, in a highly charged polemical context by Epiphanius of Salamis, a Christian heresy-hunter who was prone to exaggeration and fabrication, who was incautious at best in his attacks against heretical sects in his book the Panarion (= “Medicine Chest”; in it Epiphanius supplies the “antidotes” for the “snake-bites of heresy”). The most notorious of the groups that Epiphanius attacks were known by a variety of names, including the “Phibionites.” According to Epiphanius -- our sole source of knowledge about the group -- these gnostic believers engaged in nocturnal sex rituals [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:03:37-04:00July 2nd, 2023|Christian Apocrypha, Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE)|

The Lost Gospel of Basilides

I sometimes get asked about "lost Gospels" -- Gospels that we know at one time did exist (because they are mentioned and sometimes even discussed by ancient authors) but that, alas, exist no more. I dealt with this question on the blog many moons ago, and I regret to say that in the interim, the books I'd love to show up have not. And I don't expect them to. But then again, life is full of surprises. One of the very early ones I'd *love* to get my hands on is the Gospel of Basilides. Basilides is one of the early Gnostic figures mentioned by the late-second century heresy-hunter Irenaeus. Regrettably, we do not have any writings from Basilides or any of his followers, and so all we know about these people and their writings is what authors like Irenaeus tell us. That is somewhat like asking Mike Pence for a fair assessment of Bernie Sanders. You have to take the description with a pound of salt. We don’t know if Basilides actually had a [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:03:37-04:00July 1st, 2023|Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE), Heresy and Orthodoxy|

The Road from the “Duo of Philo” to the “Trinity of Nicaea”–Guest Post by Omar Robb

As you know, blog members at the Platinum level are allowed to publish posts on any topic of their choosing (related to blog interests!) to other Platinum members. After a month or so, the other Platinums vote on which one can appear on the blog at large. If you yourself are interested in getting in on that action -- reading the posts of other Platinum members, and on occasion coming up with one of your own (it DOESN'T need to be highly scholarly or scholarly at all -- it can be your own views or questoins about something blog-related!) -- think about upping your membership to the Platinum level (Register - The Bart Ehrman Blog). The most recent vote wenbt in favor of a post by Omar Robb, which gets into the world of Greek and early Christian thinking, especially as leading to the doctrine of the Trinity. Here it is. Feel free to comment and ask Omar any questions! ****************************** The road from the "Duo of Philo" to the "Trinity of Nicaea" Omar Abur-Robb [...]

Diane2025-09-10T13:03:37-04:00June 30th, 2023|Public Forum|

Did Paul Get Along with the Other Apostles?
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Did Paul Get Along with the Other Apostles?

Acts of the Apostles, Paul and His Letters

Did Paul Get Along with the Other Apostles?

I mentioned in my previous posts that there are discrepancies between Paul’s letters and the book of Acts in both major and minor ways, and in my last post I dealt with some differences that appear when one looks closely at the details (the issue I addressed: what does Paul do immediately upon his conversion). There are many instances like that throughout Acts: if you compare what Paul has to say with what Acts has to say, on the same topic or about the same event, you will find differences, and often these differences matter a lot to the overall narrative. There are also of differences that emerge from the overall portrayal of Paul and his Christian mission. In this post I’ll deal with one example, Paul's relationship with the other Apostles. In both Acts and Paul's letters its clear that Paul had relations those who were apostles before him, chiefly the former disciples of Jesus (Peter, John, etc.) and Jesus’ own brother James, who was to become the leader of the church in Jerusalem. [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:03:37-04:00June 29th, 2023|Acts of the Apostles, Paul and His Letters|

After Paul Converted… Does the Book of Acts Contradict Paul Himself?

Is the account of Paul's life in Acts at odds with what Paul says himself? If not, are the stories in Acts just invented out of whole cloth? Some people who responded to my previous post on the historical trustworthiness of the book of Acts suggested that maybe its author “Luke” (we don’t know the author’s real name, so we may as well call him this) wasn't just makin' stuff up, but had sources of information available to him for the book of Acts, just as he clearly did for the Gospel (e.g., the Gospels of Mark and Q). I think this is absolutely right, he almost certainly did have sources. It should be clear that he wasn't simply creating complete fictions about Paul: that there are numerous close parallels in Acts to what Paul has to say about himself. So there is a historical gist to his accounts on some level. At the same time, almost all these parallels also contain striking discrepancies from Paul. So Luke had sources, but the sources were not [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:03:37-04:00June 28th, 2023|Acts of the Apostles, Paul and His Letters|

Was Paul Authorized to Persecute Christians?

Who gave Paul the authority to persecute Christians? The book of Acts suggests it was the authorities in Jerusalem. Can that be right? In fact, is Acts right in what it says about Paul generally? The questions matter: Acts provides our oldest surviving narrative description of the first thirty years of Christianity, and the only narrative source of the life of Paul (before the legendary Acts of Paul from a century or so later). It's a terrifically interesting book. What can we say about its historical accuracy? I was browsing through posts from the good ole days of the blog "in the beginning," and came across a brief thread from, well, eleven years ago that addressed these kinds of questions. I thought would be worth reposting it here. My posts started in relation to a question I received. ****************************** QUESTION: You mention in your book "Did Jesus Exist?" that Paul started his persecution of Christians in the early 30s. If he was tasked with hunting down Christians by the Sanhedrin he must have had a [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:03:17-04:00June 27th, 2023|Acts of the Apostles, Paul and His Letters|

Was Abraham “Just Plain Nuts?” A Platinum Post by Douglas Wadeson MD

Here is an unusually challenging post that deals directly with one of the major religious/ethical problems of the entire Bible. The focus is Abraham, a central figure for the three major monotheistic religions of the world that are together followed by over half the humans on the planet. But is Abraham actually a commendable figure in the Scriptures. Or, not to put too fine a point on it -- is he nuts? Read the post and let Doug know your views of the matter! ****************************** One of my favorite Far Side cartoons by Gary Larson shows a man lying on the couch as the psychiatrist writes on his notepad, “Just plain nuts!” I suspect we have all encountered people that prompted such a thought to cross our minds. I realize it is difficult to make a psychiatric diagnosis on someone without a direct interview and observation, but I have a serious concern about one of the pivotal figures in the religious world. To make the situation more difficult there is no way to know how [...]

Diane2025-09-10T13:03:16-04:00June 26th, 2023|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Public Forum|

Can the Qur’an and Early Islam Be Studied Critically (Like the NT and Early Christianity?) Guest Post by Stephen Shoemaker

Why don’t scholars engage in a historical-critical study of the Qur’an the way they do with the New Testament and the Hebrew Bible? I get asked this kind of thing all the time – with variations: “Where can I find a scholarly discussion the critical problems with the Qur’an like scholars publish about the Bible all the time?” or “I know Muslims claim the Qur’an is perfect, but what to critical scholars say about it?” or “Why don’t scholars take a historical to early Islam like they do with early Christianity?” For most of my career there really hasn’t been much out there to suggest, but in recent years that has begun to change. In large part that’s because of a former student of mine who is now a prominent scholar of early Christianity, Stephen Shoemaker, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Oregon. Stephen is an unusually productive scholar with a wide range of expertise (and a deep knowledge of a crazy number of ancient languages and obscure texts!). Check him out [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:03:17-04:00June 25th, 2023|Public Forum|

Did the Curtain in the Temple Really Rip in Half at Jesus’ Crucifixion?

Did the curtain in the temple really rip in half when Jesus died? That’s what the Gospels say. But can it be true? [[RECALL, in case you haven’t been reading each of the posts in this thread: I’ve been trying to show how experts in the phenomenon of “memory” can help us reflect on the Gospel traditions about Jesus. Memory is a much wider and more expansive phenomenon than most people imagine. Memories involve what we’ve done, what we’ve experienced, what we’ve learned, what we’ve heard, and what we simply recall about the past whether we ourselves experienced it and whether our recollections are just personal or collectively shared by a broader swath of our community (e.g., our “memories” of the Clinton presidency or of the Civil War) . When seen in this broader sense, the Gospels contain some “historically true” memories of Jesus but also some distorted or fake memories. In the current thread of posts I’ve been discussing key passages of the Passion narratives of the Gospels. All these are taken from my [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:03:16-04:00June 24th, 2023|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus, Memory Studies|

Was Jesus an Ascetic Street Preacher or a Man With a Plan? A Platinum Post From Omar Robb

In this post Platinum guest poster Omar Robb takes on one of the key questions anyone must grapple with in studying the New Testament: how are we to understand the activities and mission of Jesus? Feel free to comment with your own views! ****************************** I am going here to generate a story (a made-up story) that you should read as a fictional imaginary one. Just go with this story to the end. After that, we will start a serious discussion. ##### The start this imaginary built-up story: Jesus, John the Baptist, and Zechariah (John’s father) were relatives, and they originated from a noble family in the capital until they lost favor in the eyes of the authority many decades before the time of Jesus, and they were forced into exile in Galilee. Zechariah formed a secret political party with the objective of liberating Palestine from the Roman rule and their puppets in the capital. When Zechariah passed away, his son followed the plan. They (Zechariah and John) managed over the years to form a culture [...]

Diane2025-09-10T13:03:15-04:00June 23rd, 2023|Historical Jesus, Public Forum|

Did The Twelve Become Only Three? Platinum post by Douglas Wadeson MD

As you know, Platinum members on the blog are allowed to publish posts for other Platinum members, who then vote on one to be included on the entire blog. I'm pleased to publish this guest post by Douglas Wadeson, on an unusually intriguing and important topic. Did Jesus twelve disciples stay committed to the movement after his death, as everyone assumes? Or are there reasons to think that most of them actually abandoned the cause? Read this challenging post and let us know what you think! (And think about moving up to the Platinum level yourself: along with being allowed to publish your own posts, you will be invited to a special quarterly webinar with just the Platinums and me). ****************************** Early Christianity had many stories about the adventures of the Twelve Apostles after the death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus. Thomas is tricked into becoming a missionary to India.1 John travels about evangelizing while demonstrating control of bedbugs!2 Andrew was said to travel to the area now known as Ukraine to evangelize there – [...]

admin2025-07-16T17:42:49-04:00June 22nd, 2023|Historical Jesus, Public Forum|

Help Wanted: Join Bart Ehrman Professional Services as a Writer/Editor!
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Help Wanted: Join Bart Ehrman Professional Services as a Writer/Editor!

Public Forum

Help Wanted: Join Bart Ehrman Professional Services as a Writer/Editor!

Are you a talented, educated, and skilled writer or editor with a passion for Biblical and Christian studies? We're excited to announce an opportunity to contribute to bartehrman.com, Bart’s other prominent website with thousands of readers. We're ramping up our content production and need your expertise! Bartehrman.com serves as Bart's professional website, offering online courses, books, and the possibility to hire Bart for speaking engagements. In order to drive traffic from Google search, the website also features a blog component where we regularly post articles. Instead of Bart himself, we enlist the expertise of capable and insightful authors like Keith Long. Here's an example of an article authored by Keith Long: For more examples of the types of articles we publish, please click here. Qualifications Needed: As we explore a wide range of topics related to the New Testament and early Christianity, we're looking for a writer to take the reins and bring fresh perspectives. You don't necessarily need a PhD, but some formal education in Biblical or Christian studies is desired. If you have [...]

Chrishuntley2025-09-10T13:03:17-04:00June 21st, 2023|Public Forum|

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