Page 52 – The Bart Ehrman Blog

Remembering Columbus, Remembering Christ

In my previous post on Abraham Lincoln I discussed how the collective "memory" of important persons from the past can be distorted. We as a society "remember" things in certain ways -- e.g., Vietnam; Civil Rights Movement; Elvis; 9/11), -- different groups differently and not always accurately . Here I give another example, not to be a definitive demonstration of my point so much as to help us think about the issue. What about our memories of Christopher Columbus? And, well, how about the early Christians' memory of Jesus? Again, this comes from the early part of my book Jesus Before the Gospels (HarperOne, 2016). ****************************** Remembering Columbus Much the same can be said about most of the historical figures that we revere, from Caesar Augustus to Joan of Arc to Christopher Columbus. Columbus is an interesting example. He is not always remembered today in the same glowing terms that we remembered him when I was a child growing up in the 50s and 60s. In those days, we remembered Columbus as one of the great [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:02:23-04:00May 7th, 2023|Memory Studies, Public Forum|

How Do We “Remember” Lincoln?

In my last post, I mentioned a phenomenon known as “collective” memory. It's how groups of people "remember" something in the past. This isn't quite the same as how you remember what you did on your last vacation. It's more like how past events or figures are constructed in the broader "memory" of a society. Sociologists have long studied this problem, and their findings can help us think differently about how later Christian societies (groups of people) "remembered" Jesus. Here's an example I cite in my book Jesus Before the Gospels (HarperOne, 2016). ****************************** Remembering Lincoln In 2014 a poll was taken of 162 members of the American Political Science Association, asking them to rank all the past presidents of the United States, from best to worst.[1] Probably to no one’s great surprise, the top-ranked president was Abraham Lincoln. Most of us – though certainly not all of us – remember Lincoln as a truly great and noble man who did remarkable things for his country. But he was not always thought of in that [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:02:23-04:00May 6th, 2023|Memory Studies, Public Forum|

When I Got Seriously Interested in Memory (at least insofar as I remember)

(Recall: this post came from the past, when I was working on my book about Jesus and Memory, badly titled Jesus Before the Gospels. I had forgotten about the post till just now!) As I indicated in my previous post, I have long been interested in memory for both personal and professional reasons. On the personal level, I have known people very close to me who have experienced serious memory problems, for example through strokes. Depending on what part of the brain is affected, different memory functions are damaged. For example, someone may remember perfectly well what happened in an event 20 years ago, but forget a conversation they just had. I have often wondered why and how that is.. And then there was my own memory. For some things I have a terrific memory. And for lots of things I have an absolutely terrible memory. I especially have a terrible “episodic” memory (as psychologists call it), a memory for things that happen in your life and you experience. Let me give an example. About [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:02:23-04:00May 4th, 2023|Bart’s Biography, Book Discussions, Memory Studies|

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

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 – I’ve been there several times and a statue of Andrew is seen outside their parliament building and elsewhere.3 The vast majority of these stories are so fanciful and written so late that scholars do not take them as factual, but they have worked their way into Christian traditions. What did the Apostles do after Jesus? Did they even remain faithful, let alone evangelize? All four Gospels hint at doubts among the Apostles, even after Jesus’ reported resurrection appearances. Mark, our earliest gospel, portrays the Twelve as mostly clueless throughout Jesus’ ministry. At Jesus’ arrest “His disciples all left Him and fled” (Mark 14:50). In the original ending, at 16:8, the women flee the tomb and do NOT tell the other [...]

Diane2025-09-10T13:03:16-04:00May 3rd, 2023|Public Forum|

My Forgotten Book on Memory

Of all the books I've written for a general audience, the one that I think got (by far) less attention than it deserved -- well, OK, less attention that I wanted and hoped (!) -- was Jesus Before the Gospels. I've long thought I gave it a very bad title. The book is really about memory -- what we know about how memory works and doesn't work, and how that affects our understanding of the Gospel stories about Jesus, which are based on memories of Jesus and usually among people who were remembering stories about him rather than things they observed themselves. I did some posts on the book many years ago, and thought it would be worthwhile to revisit them, and the book, since it really is crucially important for understanding the Gospels themselves and the problems with knowing about the historical Jesus. The book discusses psychological understandings of memories and false memories, the value of eyewitness testimony, anthropological studies of oral cultures, and other things of relevance to New Testament scholars even though the vast [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:02:23-04:00May 3rd, 2023|Memory Studies|

And Here’s My Final Exam on The Birth of Christianity

Yesterday I posted an old final exam for my course Introduction to the New Testament. And for your amusement, here is an exam for my course that I taught this semester, called the Birth of Christianity, which covered the developments within Christianity after the New Testament up through the conversion of Constantine. See how you do! And again, I wish I could grade your answers, but, alas.... The Birth of Christianity, Reli 208 Final Exam This is exam is in three sections; you have three hours to complete it. We suggest you spend no more than an hour on each section. Section One: Short Identification. Write short answers up to 50 words on ten (and no more than ten) of the following. Make your answers as detailed and informative as you can. Ebionites The Gospel of Peter Arius Apologists Theodosius I Tertullian The Great Persecution Thecla Donatism Asceticism Incarnation Christology Infancy Gospel of Thomas Section Two: First Essay. Write an essay on the following topic. Make it as detailed [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:02:23-04:00May 2nd, 2023|Public Forum|

Was Jesus a False Prophet?

As many of you know, I started a podcast awhile back, called Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman. It's not connected with the blog, but it deals with stuff most blog members would be interested in. (And hey, it's free! Available both as a podcast on all the main podcast servers and on Youtube.) A new episode comes out every Tuesday, and it occurred to me that you might be interested in knowing what's happening on it. So, I've decided to make weekly announcements here, in case you're interested in going there! This past Tuesday, the topic I discussed with my host Megan Lewis, was "Was Jesus a False Prophet." Here's the description, in case you'd like to check it out. Historical scholars for over a century have maintained that Jesus predicted that the end of history as we know it was to come in his own generation. Conservative Christians -- laypeople and scholars alike -- have insisted that this is a complete misportrayal of Jesus. And many people -- possibly most? -- believe that [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:02:24-04:00May 1st, 2023|Public Forum|

Wanna Take My Final Exam In New Testament?

I was browsing through some old posts from years ago and came across this one, a copy of my final exam for my undergraduate course, Introduction to the New Testament. Check it out. How would you do? The students have some idea of what the exam will entail in advance. For the identifications, anything they've read or heard during the semester is fair game. I don't give them a list of terms ahead of time to study. They have to know every term covered in the reading and that I've given in class. For the essays: two weeks ahead of time I gave them fourteen possible essay questions for the exam, and told them I would choose two of the fourteen for the final. I decided to give them some choice, as you'll see, so they could have some leeway about which essay to write. I won't be able to correct your wrong answers or even to tell you the right ones, since each identification could take up to 50 words, and the essays took [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:02:23-04:00April 30th, 2023|Public Forum|

Good Friday or Easter? CNN OpEd

On Easter Sunday CNN published an OpEd that I wrote to discuss how so many Christians (most I've ever known) are not overly compelled by Good Friday but are passionate about Easter. Just, well, check out the church attendance on both days. In the OpEd I argued that it's because as a rule most Christians prefer the glory to the pain, and in some ways that preference is written into the canon of the New Testament, where the teachings of Jesus of the need to serve others even if it means suffering comes first and then Revelation where the saints are given domination of the earth and a city of gold from which they rule the earth with a rod of iron comes last. The reality is that most Christians prefer the conquering Christ of Revelation to the suffering Jesus of the Gospels -- at least when it comes to what they want to see in their own lives. CNN has a policy that does not allow me to reproduce the entire OpEd, just the [...]

Diane2025-09-10T13:02:22-04:00April 29th, 2023|Public Forum|

Is 2 Thessalonians a Forgery? From 132 CE? Platinum Guest Post by Omar Robb

The proposition that the 2 Thessalonians was forged in 132AD by a Thessalonian priest. Omar Abur-Robb omr-mhmd.yolasite.com There have been lot of arguments discussing the authenticity of the 2 Thessalonians. Many Scholars concluded (due to many observations) that it is a forgery. I am going here to add one more observation into the list by highlighting an angle that was probably missed. I need to give credit to Joseph Turmel (1859 - 1943) who probably was the first to link this letter to Bar-Kokhba revolt, and the model that I am presenting here is not very far from his model. [Reference: Introduction by Neil Godfrey, https://vridar.org/2011/05/31/identifying-the-man-of-sin-in-2-thessalonians/] The Second Thessalonians is a letter that is attributed to Paul for the Thessalonian Christians. The main objective of this letter is a discussion about the return of Jesus in 2.1: “Concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to him”, and the narratives related to the antichrist: the “man of sin”. So, the explicit objective of the letter is: Jesus will not return [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:02:23-04:00April 28th, 2023|Forgery in Antiquity, Paul and His Letters|

“Death is nothing to us.” What Do YOU Think?

I quote: “You need to realize that death is nothing to us. Everything that is good and bad in our lives comes from the experiences of our senses. But death brings an end to our senses/experiences. And so having the right understanding – that death is nothing to us – makes our mortality enjoyable, not because we will live forever but because we don’t pointlessly long to live forever. For there are no terrors in life for the one who fully understands that there are no terrors in not living. It is absurd for people who fear death -- not because it is afflicting them now but because they expect it will be horrible when it comes. For this allegedly most awful thing – death -- is actually nothing to us: when we exist, we are not dead, but when we are dead, we no longer exist. And so death is completely irrelevant – both to those who are living and to those who are dead. Those who are living are not experiencing it and [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:02:22-04:00April 27th, 2023|Afterlife, Reflections and Ruminations|

My Best Best-Selling Fluke

A couple of weeks ago I published a post about how an author writes a bestseller (she doesn't! It becomes one or not for reasons other than the author's intent or writing...) I remembered I had posted something on the topic years ago, based on a blog member's question about my personal best-selling book, Misquoting Jesus, and why it did so well. In some ways it's a real puzzle. The book is about Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. HUH??? A bestselling book? What??? (That, at least, is what all my friends said!) But the answer relates to my previous post. Here is the Q and then the A. QUESTION: In your previous answer to me you indicated that what makes a bestseller, in the end of the day, is massive media attention. My question now is what sparks this attention. In other words, why, out of all your books, did Misquoting Jesus receive a great attention from the media? RESPONSE: Ha! It’s a great question. I’ll start by saying that if there were [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:02:07-04:00April 26th, 2023|Bart’s Biography, Book Discussions|

Vote for your favorite Platinum Guest Post!

We've had a string of interesting Platinum guest posts since our last vote. Which of these is your favorite? Send in your vote to Diane at [email protected] -- and I'll post the winner on the full blog. Remember: you too can write a guest post for Platinums. Is there anything you want to discuss? Wanna an idea out there, let the world know what's what? It could be anything connected to the blog. Give it a shot! And in the meantime, vote for one of these. February 13, 2023 Jesus’ Resurrection: A Challenging Hypothetical. Ryan Fleming February 17, 2023 Analyzing the Prophecies in Daniel 7, 2 and 9 Omar Robb March 31, 2023 What Does God Think of Surrogacy? Imran M. Usmani April 7, 2023 Yahweh and Moses Omar Abur-Robb

admin2025-07-16T17:42:04-04:00April 26th, 2023|Public Forum|

A Scandalous Discovery of a Scandalous Gospel?

Later scholars have sometimes claimed Morton Smith forged the Secret Gospel of Mark; he claimed he *discovered* it. Which is it? Here I continue with my account of how he said it all happened. In my previous post I indicated that in 1958 Smith was catagaloguing the books of the library of the monastery of Mar Saba near Jerusalem, when he found a book that had a text written into its final (blank) pages. It was allegedly a letter of Clement of Alexandria, a famous theologian and ethicist who lived and wrote around 200 CE. Smith immediately recognized that it was a letter we did not have before. And here is how I discuss what he did next, in my book Lost Christianities (Oxford University Press, 2003). ****************************** On the spot, Smith decided to photograph the three pages that contained the handwritten copy of Clement’s letter, but chose to hold off translating the entire text until later, reasoning that if some such treasure had turned up, there might be more where that came from; given [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:02:06-04:00April 25th, 2023|Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE), History of Christianity (100-300CE)|

Could the Mysterious “Secret Gospel of Mark” Be Authentic?

In my previous posts I discussed how Morton Smith claimed he discovered a copy of an ancient letter of Clement of Alexandria (ca. 200 CE), written in the back of a 17th century book, by a scribe of the 18th century, in which Clement described a mysterious “Secret Gospel” – an intriguing and possibly scandalous longer version of the Gospel of Mark. In yesterday’s post I indicated how Smith went about trying to authenticate the discovery. Here I pick up at that point, again, as recounted in my book Lost Christianities. ****************************** A key question was whether the copyist who put the alleged letter of Clement of Alexandria that Smith mound into the bak of a book was copying an actualy letter of Clement of Alexandria. There is no difficulty believing that a scribe of the eighteenth century might have had a fragmentary copy of an ancient letter at his disposal – possibly a loose sheet in the ancient library, known for its famous ancient texts – and that rather than simply discard it, he [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:02:07-04:00April 23rd, 2023|Canonical Gospels, Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE), History of Biblical Scholarship|

How Do You Prove an Ancient Manuscript is Ancient? The Secret Gospel of Mark

In my previous posts I explained how American scholar of early Christianity, Morton Smith, claimed to have discovered the Secret Gospel of Mark in 1958. Now I’ll discuss how, once he discovered it (assuming he did – some scholars think he actually forged it…), how he went about trying to find out if it was actually an ancient Gospel. Again, from my book Lost Christianities: Authenticating and Interpreting the Letter Morton Smith devoted much of his research for the next fifteen years studying this find. Roughly speaking, the work involved establishing the authenticity of the letter and determining the meaning of the passages quoted from the Secret Gospel. In 1973, Smith published the results of his labors in two books, one a popular account for general audiences, full of interesting anecdotes and still worth reading, The Secret Gospel: The Discovery and Interpretation of the the Secret Gospel According to Mark, the other an erudite report on his investigations for scholars in the field, an amazing book of scholarship but inaccessible for the most part to [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:02:06-04:00April 22nd, 2023|Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE), History of Biblical Scholarship|

The Naked Man of Mark 14:51-52, the Secret Gospel, and a Pressing Question: Did Jesus Engage in Homoerotic Behavior?

I am providing here a thread of posts on Morton Smith’s discovery, in 1958, of the “Secret Gospel of Mark,” a longer version of Mark’s Gospel in a letter allegedly written by Clement of Alexandria who attacks a group of nefarious Gnostics. Smith argued this really was an authentic letter, that the Secret Gospel really did exist in antiquity, and, yet more intriguing, that IT was the older form of the Gospel of Mark. Our Gospel of Mark *today* is an abbreviated version, edited to rid the Gospel of a couple of potentially scandalous passages. Whoa. Could that be right? Here’s a summary of Smith’s argument: ****************************** There are some interesting features of the shorter version – the one found in the New Testament – that can be explained if the longer version were the original, and this is some of the evidence that Smith and others have adduced for their view. To take the second quotation first. Clement indicates that it appeared after the first part of Mark 10:46: “And they came to Jericho; [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:02:07-04:00April 20th, 2023|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus|

March 2023 Gold Q&A (video)

Here you go, Gold & Platinum members! https://vimeo.com/817695164/77e10c1b7f?ts=585000&share=copy

Diane2025-09-10T13:02:23-04:00April 19th, 2023|Public Forum|

Interview with Michael Shermer
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Interview with Michael Shermer

Public Forum

Interview with Michael Shermer

Many of you will know Michael Shermer, from his publications and podcast. He writes about the history of science from the perspective of religious skepticism, and is the editor-in-chief of Skeptic Magazine. Like me, he converted to evangelical Christianity as a teenager, went to a conservative Christian college, and ended up leaving the faith. Michael and I had an unusually interesting discussion about my book Armageddon: What the Bible Really Says about the End for his podcast, and he has agreed to allow me to share it with y'all here. Enjoy!

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:02:06-04:00April 19th, 2023|Public Forum|

James Tabor on the 1993 Waco Disaster, Part III

The 1993 Waco Disaster—How Not to Negotiate with Apocalyptic Believers James D. Tabor, retired professor of Religious Studies, UNC Charlotte In this three-part series James Tabor surveys what happened 30 years ago outside Waco, TX as Federal authorities violently confronted a group of apocalyptic believers who believed that David Koresh, their prophetic leader was a final messianic messenger of the book of Revelation. Part III: A Peaceful Surrender Plan Rejected! Dr. Phillip Arnold and I offered our services to the FBI on March 7. As biblical scholars we had specialized in the history of biblical apocalyptic interpretation and were generally familiar with Adventist groups although neither of us had ever heard of David Koresh and the Branch Davidians before February 28. We studied carefully the fifty-eight-minute tape that Koresh had released on March 2 and began many hours of theological conversation over the telephone with Livingstone Fagan. Fagan had been sent out of Mount Carmel by Koresh on March 23 to act as a theological spokesperson for the Davidians; he was now being [...]

Diane2025-09-10T13:02:22-04:00April 18th, 2023|Public Forum|

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