Page 59 – The Bart Ehrman Blog

Want to Watch/Discuss a Jesus Movie with Me? The Blog Movie Club!

People often ask me what my favorite “Jesus Movie” is, and they almost never expect my answer. For me it’s hands down. A clear forerunner. A movie most people have never heard of, but in my opinion, the best of all time: “Jesus of Montreal.” This is not just my favorite Jesus movie of all time but one of my very favorite movies of any kind of all time. Want to watch it and then have a discussion about it with me? This will be our first ever Blog Movie Club event (BMC)! The main event, the discussion with me, will be on Sunday, January 22, 4:00-5:30 pm EST. The Movie Club viewing will not be that day, but before; and you have two (well three!) massively convenient options. You can: Watch it on your own at your leisure. Join other blog members in watching it simultaneously in silence, with a brief introduction and discussion afterward (without me) led by movie club organizer and blog member Lance Boyer, on January 14, 8:00 pm; Join other [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:00:48-04:00December 23rd, 2022|Public Forum|

Instead of “From Nazareth” was Jesus a “Nazarite”??

In my previous post I showed why Jesus almost certainly came from the small village of Nazareth. There have been some writers (OK, mythicists who don't believe there ever *was* a historical Jesus), who have argued that Jesus could not have come from Nazareth since the place did not exist. I dealt with this problem in several posts back in April of this year (check the archives for that month). Here, though, I want to address a related issue -- the claim that the early Christians who started saying Jesus was from Nazareth actually just made a *mistake*. They misunderstood that when some believers in Jesus called him a Nazirite -- someone who had taken a Nazirite vow. Nazirite vows come from the Hebrew Bible (Numbers 6): an Israelite who wanted to be particularly holy for a period of his life would take the vow, which would include not consuming grape products (think: wine!), not touching corpses (because of ritual defilement), and not cutting their hair (think Samson). Jesus was said -- according to this [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:00:35-04:00December 22nd, 2022|Historical Jesus|

Did Jesus Actually Come from Nazareth?

When you ask most anyone where Jesus came from, they will say he was born in Bethlehem. The reason is not hard to find: the only references to Jesus’ birth in the New Testament squarely place his birth in Bethlehem. There are, as many of you know, only two passages of the New Testament that narrate the events surrounding Jesus’ birth: Matthew 1-2 and Luke 1-2. And they both agree in placing it in Bethlehem. (Neither of the other Gospels says anything about it, nor do any of the other 23 books of the New Testament.) And yet there are compelling reasons for questioning that view, so that a large number of critical scholars – even prominent Roman Catholic scholars – think that it is more likely that Jesus was born in Nazareth. Let me explain why. The first thing to stress is that all four Gospels – including Matthew and Luke – agree that Jesus came from Nazareth. That is to say, Nazareth (not Bethlehem) was his hometown. In my view, that tradition [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:00:35-04:00December 21st, 2022|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus|

Are You Willing To Give a Holiday Gift Membership To Someone Who Needs It??

We are five days from Christmas and twelve days from the New Year. At about this time for nearly every December of the blog's existence I have opened up a holiday giving option that can help out people who really want to be on the blog but cannot afford the membership fees. In most years we we have been able to give out something like 70-80 gift memberships. To qualify to receive one, a person had to send me their contact information and to tell me a bit about their circumstances, why they could not afford membership fees (I don't pry: I just want a general idea). I provided gift memberships only to people who really needed them. Some of the stories have been heart-breaking. Luckily, virtually everyone who contacted me has been able to be given a gift membership. I will post on my social media (Facebook and Twitter) as well as on a public post here, the availability of memberships. I will give out as many as we have. Would you like to [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:47:24-04:00December 20th, 2022|Public Forum|

Did Jesus Appear to 500 People After His Resurrection?

What do we make of Paul's claim that 500 people at one time saw Jesus after the resurrection (in 1 Corinthians 15:3-5)? I get this question every now and then -- maybe five or six times just this year. These days, among other things, I point 0ut something I hadn't thought about in most of the years of my existence, that there was almost certainly no Christian group (meaning: a group of people who believed Jesus was raised from the dead) of that size in Paul's day anywhere in the world! (I discuss the numbers of Christians at different time periods in antiquity in my book The Triumph of Christianity.) So on that level alone it seems highly implausible. But jut now looking through old posts from many years ago, I see I was asked the question and dealt with it in a different way. I'd forgotten all about it, but see now that I give a bit of analysis that tries to unpack Paul's claims. Here's the Q and the A: ****************************** QUESTION on [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:00:35-04:00December 20th, 2022|Paul and His Letters, Reader’s Questions|

Did Christ Save Everyone When He Descended to Hades?

In my previous post I started to discuss the famous doctrine of the “Harrowing of Hell,” where Christ is said to have descended to Hades after his death (since he was a human, after all, and when humans die, they go to Hades. Part of the reason for the doctrine, then, is that if he didn’t go, he wouldn’t have had all the human experiences); but he did not go there forever obviously (in this way he was *unlike* everyone else!) but as the son of God he went to bring his salvation to those who had died previously (who could not be saved by his death because it hadn’t happened yet.) I pointed out in the previous post that some theologians said that Christ went to Hades to preach to those who were there to give them the chance to repent (who wouldn’t want to get outta there?? Apparently some or lots?) but others claimed that he went to assert his raw power over his enemies to show who was Lord and King. These [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:00:35-04:00December 18th, 2022|Afterlife, Christian Apocrypha, Early Christian Doctrine|

Did Jesus Descend to Hell After He Died?

Someone on the blog recently asked me about the idea that after Jesus’ death, and before his resurrection, he “descended into hell.” This is an affirmation found in the Apostle’s Creed, and so continues to be recited by millions of Christians still today. But what does it mean? Throughout the history of the church it has usually been thought – by those who thought and/or affirmed such things -- that Jesus descended to the realm of the dead to provide salvation to some (all?) of the people there, to liberate them from their condemnation (which was impossible *before* then because salvation can only come when Christ died – in this view – and so not before. So when he died he went down to save some (or all) of those who were there, taking them from Hades to heaven. This notion has traditionally been called “The Harrowing of Hell.” But how did it work, exactly? And were did the idea come from? As it turns out, I devoted a chapter to the question in my [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:00:35-04:00December 17th, 2022|Afterlife, Early Christian Doctrine, Historical Jesus|

What Would the Apostle Paul Think of The Trinity? Platinum Guest Post by Joel Scheller

Now here's an intriguing question about early Christianity, posed and answered by Platinum Blog member Joel Scheller in a guest post for all you other Platinums. One way to put the question is this: Would the apostle-Paul have been considered an arch-heretic in the fourth century? A good case can be made! Read on. And think about contributing a post yourself, on any topic connected to the blog. Have an idea/thought? Get it out there! For now -- here's Joel's most recent contribution. He'll be happy to address your comments. ****************************** I find it interesting that so much Christian teaching is based on the Apostle Paul’s influence and yet the doctrine on the very nature of God for most Christians seems out of step with what Paul has to say on the subject. To start off with, The Nicene Creed was originally provoked by the question of how Jesus was God in relation to God the Father, with the inclusion of The Holy Spirit in the creed as almost an afterthought, and whose relationship in [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:00:34-04:00December 16th, 2022|Early Christian Doctrine, Paul and His Letters|

The Mind-Body Problem As My Personal Dilemma. What Do YOU Think?

Is there an I in me? For several years now, I have been increasingly fascinated by the brain as an organ, and by consciousness as a phenomenon. These are not topics you can figure out simply by taking some time to muse about them – although I strongly advocate taking time to muse about them and putting some effort into musing about them seriously. There are, of course, incredibly smart people out there with massive expertise who know and understand things beyond the ken of us mere mortals. But even they haven’t figured out the brain (or even close; but whoa do they know a lot about it). Or consciousness: even though, in this case, a number of people – usually philosophers – certainly claim they have, or at least that they *basically* have. It is worth reading what these folk have to say when they write simplified versions of their views in trade books designed for the rest of us who ain’t on their level. And these versions can indeed get us to think [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:00:35-04:00December 15th, 2022|Public Forum|

December Gold Q&A

It is time to schedule the Gold Q&A for December! My plan is to record it this weekend -- which means I need your QUESTIONS. So you have something to ask? It can be holiday related, non-holiday related, and anything-related-to-the-blog related. Go for it! I'm more likely to answer questions that are relatively short and to the point than those that go on for a long paragraph. So be concise, I'll try to be informative, and the world will be a happy place. To enter your question on to the list: send it to Diane at [email protected] The DEADLINE for your question is this Saturday, December 17 midnight (whenever midnight is where you live). As has become our wont, we will release the recording in both video and audio -- for Gold members only. I'm looking forward to it! Bart

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:00:35-04:00December 14th, 2022|Public Forum|

A Truly Great New Testament Scholar: E. P. Sanders in Memoriam
Gallery
A Truly Great New Testament Scholar: E. P. Sanders in Memoriam

Public Forum

A Truly Great New Testament Scholar: E. P. Sanders in Memoriam

I am dedicating this blog post to the memory of E. P. Sanders, one of the truly great scholars of the New Testament in modern times, who died November 21, 2022, age 85. I was heavily influenced by his scholarship, already during graduate school, and I always considered him as the kind of massively learned and rigorous scholars that all of us should strive to be. He more or less single-handedly revolutionized three major areas of New Testament studies, in times when virtually no one had a huge impact on *any* area. In my view he was the most influential NT scholar of our time. Ed was born in Texas and did his PhD at Union Theological Seminar under one of the greats of the previous generation, W. D. Davies, who was himself unusually erudite scholar who focused on understanding the historical Jesus and the Gospels in light of ancient Judaism – a VERY difficult field to master. Ed started out with religious leanings, but as he advanced in his education he moved toward a [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:00:35-04:00December 14th, 2022|Public Forum|

What about Forgeries IN the New Testament? Is it Possible?

I’ve been talking about some of the early Christian forgeries, books that Christian authors published claiming to be apostles when they were … someone else. Could we have such things actually in the New Testament? That is the topic I discuss in my book Forged (HarperOne: 2011). I give extensive arguments and evidence throughout the book, but here is the opening gambit. ****************************** There are thirteen letters in the New Testament that claim to be written by Paul, including two to the Thessalonians. In the Second Letter to the Thessalonians we find a most intriguing verse, where the author tells his readers that they are not to be led astray by a letter “as if by us” which indicates that the “day of the Lord” is almost here (2 Thess 2:2). The author, in other words, knows of a letter in circulation claiming to be by Paul, which is not really by Paul. This other letter allegedly teaches an idea that Paul himself opposes. Who would create such a forged letter? Obviously someone who wanted [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:00:18-04:00December 13th, 2022|Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE), Forgery in Antiquity|

Forgeries in the Names of the Apostles: Some of the Most Interesting

As I pointed out in my previous posts, taken from the Preface of my book Forged (HarperOne, 2011), we still have numerous forged documents that emanated from the early church, numerous Gospels, Acts, Epistles, and Apocalypses (these are the four literary genres of the New Testament) all of them claiming to be written by apostles. Many of these non-canonical books are fascinating and still worth reading.[1] I’ve talked about a number of them on the blog before, but here it may be worthwhile to give a quick summary of some of them. Among the Gospels, for example, there is an account allegedly written by Peter, which gives a detailed narration of the resurrection. This is striking because – most readers have never noticed this – the New Testament Gospels do not narrate the resurrection. They do say that Jesus was buried, and they indicate that on the third day his tomb was empty; but they do not narrate the account of him actually emerging from the tomb. There is such an account in the Gospel [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:00:18-04:00December 11th, 2022|Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE), Forgery in Antiquity|

Writing Forgeries to Show the Truth

In my previous post I pointed out a major problem that confronted the earliest Christians, as I discuss in the Preface to my book Forged (HarperOne, 2011). From the beginning the followers of Jesus insisted that they had the “truth” and that it was only by accepting the “truth” about God as revealed by Jesus that anyone could have salvation. But they disagreed on what the truth was. There were numerous widespread views already in the earliest years of Christianity about who Jesus was, what his death meant, how one was to have salvation, whether one had to keep, or begin to keep, the Jewish law, and about lots of other things. How was one to get around these problems? The obvious answer presented itself early on in the Christian movement. One could know what the apostles taught because they left writings behind. These authoritative authors produced authoritative teachings. And so, the authoritative truth could be found in the apostolic writings. Even though this might sound like a perfect solution to the problem, the solution [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:00:18-04:00December 10th, 2022|Forgery in Antiquity, History of Christianity (100-300CE)|

Are You Interested in an End-of-the-Year Donation Opportunity? Blog Challenge Grants!!

Many of you are now thinking about your end-of-the-year giving plans. Here’s an option I would like to ask you to consider. The Blog has received two challenge grants that between them total $25,000. That is to say, to meet the challenge, we need to raise $25,000 ourselves. When/if we do so: whammo – that’s $50k. The funds must come in, or be pledged, by December 31. For us to meet the goal we will need lots of small donations (a dollar counts!), a number of good-sized donations (pick an amount), and several very sizeable donations. One of the reasons I’m *especially* keen on this opportunity is this. As of now we have distributed $425,000 to our charities THIS YEAR. That is by far the best we have ever done. Last year was our record year, with a total for the year of $340,000. But now we are close to a ratherremarkable milestone: $500,000 in one year. Them’s newsworthy numbers. I’d LOVE to be able to do it. And oh boy would our charities love [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:00:35-04:00December 9th, 2022|Public Forum|

Is It A Sin To Be Transgender? Platinum guest post by Douglas Wadeson MD

Fellow Platinum Blog member Doug Wadeson, MD, is not afraid to take on the difficult questions. Here's one I've never thought of posting on! And one that is as important as it is interesting. As you know, these guest posts are by Platinum members for Platinum members; and occasionally we vote on one to be posted to the entire blog. If you too want to come up with one -- go for it! But for now, here's Doug's post on transexualism and the Bible. He will be happy to respond to your comments. ****************************** I recently read of a horrible incident in which a political candidate in Santa Rosa county, Florida, suggested that doctors who assisted with gender reassignment of young people should be hung from trees.[1] Reportedly this comment was greeted with applause from the audience rather than outrage. Applause for the suggestion of lynching someone? Seriously? Unfortunately, the negative, even hateful attitude toward transgender people and gender reassignment often comes from those claiming to be Bible-believing Christians. Does the Bible say that having gender [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:01:19-04:00December 9th, 2022|Sex and Sexuality in the Bible|

Can Christianity Be Seen as “Objective” Truth? Modern and Ancient Views.

In a previous post I pointed out that for over the past century modern evangelical and fundamentalist Christianity has been unusually focused on knowing the “objective” truths that can be “proved” about Christianity. In recent times, some have argued evangelical Christianity has become far more focused on social and cultural issues than theological doctrines (when someone says that this is not the evangelical Christianity your grandfather knew, they are apparently talking about me….). And I think that’s true. But even so, apologetics is still BIG in that tradition, and it is almost always based on objective evaluation of the truth. One could argue that this evangelical obsession with religious truth was matched by the commitment to truth in the earliest years of Christianity. Historically, this is one of the features of Christianity that made it distinctive among the religions of antiquity. Most people today don’t realize that ancient religions were almost never interested in “true beliefs.” Pagan religions – by which I mean the polytheistic religions of the vast majority of people in the ancient [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:00:18-04:00December 8th, 2022|Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE), Greco-Roman Religions and Culture|

The Other Virgin Births in Antiquity

On December 14 I will be giving a one-off remote lecture, with Q&A, called "The Other Virgin Births in Antiquity." This will not be connected with the blog per se, but with my other venture in which I produce online courses and lectures (BEPS: Bart Ehrman Professional Services). You can learn about the lecture here: https://www.bartehrman.com/other-virgin-births-in-antiquity/ Jesus is decidedly conceived by a virgin in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. This is better called a "virginal conception" -- and in my course I'll explain the difference between the ideas of virginal conception; virgin birth; perpetual virginity; and immaculate conception. All very different ideas! BUT, for the sake of convenience, I'll simply refer to Jesus' conception and birth as "the virgin birth." Since, oh, I don't know, the 19th century I guess, there have been people who have claimed that virgin births were common in the ancient world. You find that claim widely today still among those who call themselves "mythicists" -- those who think Jesus didn't exist but was just a myth. One of the most common [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:00:19-04:00December 7th, 2022|Greco-Roman Religions and Culture, Historical Jesus|

Our Platinum Webinar: The Infancy Gospels!

Dear Platinum Members, Remember (or if you didn't hear about it the first time, then "member!"): We have our December webinar THIS THURSDAY, Dec. 8, at 8:00 pm ET. I've decided to do something related to Christmas but in an indirect way, a talk on the apocryphal Infancy Gospels. Or at least two of them: The Infancy Gospel of Thomas (not to be confused with the Coptic Gospel of Thomas), which tells tales of the mischievous Jesus from ages 5-12, allegedly written by his brother Thomas; and the Proto-Gospel of James, which tells stories about Jesus' *mother* and her miraculous birth and life, to explain why she was fit to bear the Son of God, allegedly written by his brother James. These are two impeccable authorities: Jesus' own brothers. What could go wrong? I hope you can come. I'll give the talk and then have Q&A. CAn't wait! Here’s the link: https://unc.zoom.us/j/97717226646?pwd=VG1rOFBDcnppV1FNQktJejZsVVZsZz09 Any questions or concerns, let me know!

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:00:35-04:00December 7th, 2022|Public Forum|

Is Judaism Legalistic? Misunderstanding the Law of Moses

In my upcoming course "Finding Moses" I'll be discussing the final four books of the Pentateuch (Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) (for more information, see: Finding Moses – Online Course Covering the Historicity of the Pentateuch - Bart D. Ehrman - New Testament Scholar, Speaker, and Consultant (bartehrman.com). Apart from the opening chapters of Exodus, these books are not well known to most Christians, even those on fairly good terms with the New Testament. I've known many a reader who was determined to read the entire Bible from beginning to end, but who quit early into Leviticus. In part that's because these books are both hard to understand and difficult to see as interesting when not explained. A huge chunk of them is made up of the laws given to Moses (almost the entire second half of Exodus, all of Leviticus, a good chunk of Numbers, and most of Deuteronomy). How can reading a bunch of antiquated laws be interesting? Of course, many (MANY!) Christians just love to cherry pick these laws in order to [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:00:19-04:00December 6th, 2022|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament|

Previous 1···585960···218 Next