Page 61 – The Bart Ehrman Blog

Why Paul Was Persecuted (Or Claimed He Was). Guest Post by Daniel Kohanski

I am pleased to publish this guest post by Platinum blog member Dan Kohanski, on an intriguing and important topic for understanding both the life (and writings) of Paul and the earliest history of the Christian movement. As you know, Platinum level members get a several perks -- I do a quarterly webinar with any of them who want to come (and provide a link to the recording afterward for those who can't make it) and they are allowed to publish posts for other Platinums. Every month or so, the members vote on one of the platinum posts to appear on the blog for everyone to see. This one is the current winner! If you are interested in participating at the Platinum level, check it out: Register - The Bart Ehrman Blog And for now, check out Dan's post. He will be happy to respond to your comments. ****************************** (This article is based on research I’ve been doing for my new book, A God of Our Invention: How Religion Shaped the Western World, to be [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:00:05-04:00November 10th, 2022|Paul and His Letters, Public Forum|

How Did Scribes Change Their Manuscripts?

As I have indicated in my recent posts, we have far more copies of the NT than of any other book from antiquity –and as a result, far more differences among our copies (i.e. more mistakes). In addition. we have ancient translations of the NT (the early “versions”) and quotations of the NT in the writings of church fathers. These also provide further pieces of evidence – as well as further variations in wording. As a result, it is a very complicated business trying to establish what the authors of the NT originally wrote. Scholars continue to debate the precise wording of this that or the other verse. In some cases we simply will never know. Two points are critically important when considering all these differences. The first is one that I always state, even though my evangelical debate opponents frequently pretend that I never say it at all. But, in fact, I always say it: the vast majority of these (hundreds of thousands!) of differences are insignificant, immaterial, and don’t matter for thing other [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:30:02-04:00November 9th, 2022|New Testament Manuscripts|

Do Church Fathers Show What the Authors of the NT Actually Wrote?

What other resources do we have to figure out what the authors of the New Testament originally wrote, if we don't have their actual writings themselves? In this post I move into a very brief discussion of one other area of evidence for the text of the New Testament, the Patristic sources. The term “patristic” stands for “fathers” (Latin: patres) of the church – that is, the early church authors who quoted the books of the New Testament in the course of their writings. This too is an exceedingly thorny area of scholarly investigation, and one that I have long been deeply interested in. It is the area that I did my PhD research and dissertation in. So here’s the deal. As I have pointed out before, we don’t have complete manuscripts of the New Testament until the middle of the fourth century – some 300 years after the books were written. We do have earlier fragmentary papyri manuscripts of this, that, or the other part of the NT, and for that we are all [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:00:04-04:00November 8th, 2022|History of Christianity (100-300CE), New Testament Manuscripts, Proto-Orthodox Writers|

Was Paul Thinking about Committing Suicide?

A blog reader recently asked me about an intriguing passage in Paul's letter to the Philippians where he says that “To live is Christ, to die is gain” (1:21) and then goes on to say that he is not sure "what to choose" -- to "depart to be with Christ" or "to remain in the flesh" (1:22). Choose? Most people have never looked at the passage carefully, but as often happens, have simply skirted over it without paying it much attention. But think about it. What is Paul saying exactly? In what sense does he have a "choice"? Is he thinking about taking matters in his own hands? Isn't that the ultimate sin? I talk about the matter briefly in my textbook on the New Testament. Here is what I say there: ****************************** In an intriguing book that discusses suicide and martyrdom in the ancient world (A Noble Death: Suicide and Martyrdom among Christians and Jews in Antiquity. HarperSanFrancisco, 1992) Arthur Droge and James Tabor argue that the modern notion that suicide is a “sin” [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:00:04-04:00November 6th, 2022|Paul and His Letters, Reflections and Ruminations|

What Are Ancient “Versions” of the New Testament?

Do we know the original wording of the New Testament? Here I continue! When scholars try to establish what an ancient author wrote, they can do so only on the basis of the surviving evidence. That seems, well, rather obvious, but the reality is that most people have never thought about that. It just seems that if you pick up a copy of Plato, or Euripides, or Cicero, that you’re simply reading what they wrote. But it’s not that simple. In none of these cases, or in any other case for any other book from the ancient world, do we actually have the person’s actual writing. All we have are later copies, and invariably these copies are filled with scribal mistakes. Scholars who are “textual critics” try to reconstruct the text that the author produced, to the best of their ability. I have been talking about the challenges of doing that with the New Testament. In many, many ways we are much better situated with the New Testament than with any other ancient book (or [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:00:04-04:00November 5th, 2022|New Testament Manuscripts|

What Charities does the Blog Support?

I sometimes get asked to provide specifics about the charities we support on the blog. To date, in ten and a half years, we have raised a total of $1.8 million. Our efforts are becoming increasingly productive: on Oct. 22 this year surpassed our entire total disbursed funds from our banner-last-year (which came in at $360,000). Where's all the money going? Not to me (I can assure you!) or to any of our overhead. I get not a thin dime; and the overhead is raised in its entirety through separate fund-raising efforts and foundation donations. Every penny from your membership fee, and from regular donations, from the book club, and from other fund-raisers, go directly to charity. I talk about the specific charities on the blog site itself, under "About the Blog." But it's good to get the information out there in even simpler form on occasion. And so, here it is! ****************************** All the monies collected by the blog (membership fees, direct donations, specified fund raisers) go into the Bart Ehrman Foundation, and [...]

admin2025-07-16T17:40:06-04:00November 3rd, 2022|Public Forum|

Trying to Make Scholarship Interesting

I've long been interested in thinking about how to make boring subjects interesting. I've become especially attuned to the issue recently as I've begun to read a lot more scholarship in fields completely unrelated to mine. Some scholars have a gift in being able to reach low level mortals like me. My own field is not nearly as complicated as the hard sciences (always hard for me, at least!) but every field has its technicalities and jargon and wide range of not-widely-shared assumptions, perspectives, and history of investigation. And so I was struck when I ran across this post from some years ago, and realized that it's still the sort of thing I think about roughly every day. ****************************** The difficulty in presenting serious scholarship to a lay audience is how to make something that can be very dry and technical and detailed and, well, boring to most human beings actually interesting and lively and thought provoking. It is obviously quite easy to make something interesting dull. University professors are unusually skilled at doing that. [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:00:04-04:00November 2nd, 2022|Bart’s Biography, Reflections and Ruminations, Teaching Christianity|

New Testament Manuscripts: Good News and Bad News

In my previous post I started talking about the different kinds of manuscripts of the New Testament we have. I now want to give some more information about these manuscripts and how they can help us figure out what the authors of the NT originally wrote (and why they pose problems for us to that end). Below is what I say about the matter in my textbook The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings. ****************************** How Can We Reconstruct the Original New Testament Manuscripts? The Good News. When trying to reconstruct what the authors of the New Testament actually wrote, based on the surviving copies, we have both good news and bad news. The good news: We have more New Testament manuscripts than for any other book from the ancient world—many, many more manuscripts than we have for the writings of Homer, Plato, Cicero, or any other important author. We have something like 5,700 manuscripts of the New Testament—from small fragments of tiny parts of a single book to complete copies [...]

admin2025-07-16T17:40:06-04:00November 1st, 2022|New Testament Manuscripts|

On a couple of personal notes…

These aren't related to the blog per se, but, well, to me. In case you're interested.... 1. As many of you know, I'm starting a podcast, Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman. In fact, it's starting tomorrow. We will be debuting with two episodes, the first that explain the title and a bit of why we chose it, how it relates to my life personally (my views of the Bible as they developed), and what it all means. The second will be more specific about Christian scribes copying their texts. My host is Megan Lewis, who is *terrific*; it includes Q&A (questions previously submitted on the topic) and a couple of other features.. You will be able to find it wherever you do your podcasts AND, if you prefer video, on my Youtube page. 2. Unrelated to that or much anything: my editor from Yale University Press emailed me today to tell me that my recent book Journeys to Heaven and Hell has been chosen for the New Yorker's "Best Books of 2022." An academic book?? Go figure. [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:00:05-04:00October 31st, 2022|Public Forum|

Is it Possible Jesus Didn’t Teach the Golden Rule?

Did Jesus actually teach the Golden Rule? Or was it foisted on his lips after his death by later followers? I have already written a couple of posts on the Golden Rule in the two places it occurs in the New Testament, Matthew 7:12 and Luke 6:31 (see: Little-Known Aspects of The Golden Rule as Found in the Sermon on the Mount and Did Jesus Give the Sermon on the Mount? ). Normally the rule is phrased like this: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." I noted, though, in the Greek clauses are reversed. A literal translation of Matthew’s version would be “Everything you want other people to do for you, you likewise do for them,” to which Matthew, importantly, adds “for this is the Law and the Prophets” (meaning that if you follow this rule, you will be following the entire will of God as revealed in the Hebrew Scriptures; Matthew 7:12); Luke is quite similar “Just as you wish people to do for you, do likewise for them” (Luke [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:00:04-04:00October 30th, 2022|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus|

The Greek Manuscripts of the New Testament

I have begun to explain the field of “textual criticism,” the academic discipline that tries to establish what an author actually wrote if you don’t have his original but only copies made from later times. In this post I begin to summarize some of the most important information about the textual “witnesses” to the text of the New Testament. I won’t be going into this information at any serious length. We could have many, many, many posts on virtually every single detail that I mention. You don’t want that. Trust me. There are three kinds of witnesses to the text of the New Testament, that is to say, three kinds of documents that can help us establish what the authors actually wrote. First, obviously, are the Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. These are copies of the New Testament in the language in which the books were originally written, produced by later scribes, who were copying earlier copies that had been made by scribes who were copying earlier copies that were made by scribes…. [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:00:04-04:00October 29th, 2022|Book Discussions, New Testament Manuscripts|

The Strange World of Textual Criticism

I've been asked a good bit lately by readers of the blog and random emailers how we can know, or if we can know, what the authors of the New Testament actually wrote -- if we don't have their original copies. By far my best selling book (Misquoting Jesus) is about that, as is my best known scholarly book (The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture). It's the issue I first got most interested in (as an 18 year old!) when it came to serious scholarship, and its the field of study I devoted nearly twenty years to it as a scholar. So, well, I'm interested! It's been over seven years since I gave anything like a full explanation of the entire field of New Testament "textual criticism" (which does not mean what a lot of people think!), and I've decided it's high time I go over it again. This will take a number of posts! ****************************** The first thing to emphasize is that the term “textual criticism” is a technical term with a very specific meaning. [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:00:04-04:00October 27th, 2022|Book Discussions, New Testament Manuscripts|

Did Jesus Give the Sermon on the Mount?

Did Jesus actually say the Golden Rule as found in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7; the saying is in Matt. 7:12). I have talked about the Sermon and why it is so important for Matthew’s Gospel (in a previous post: Little-Known Aspects of the Golden Rule as Found in the Sermon on the Mount) and now it is time to say something controversial about it. I don’t think Jesus ever gave the Sermon on the Mount. That’s not just a crazy idea I came up with one day. It’s a widespread view among historical scholars, for reasons that would not be hard to figure out. Just think about the logistics of the issue for a second. The Sermon goes on for three entire chapters. These are not concise chapters; in our Bibles today, they are 111 verses in total (48 + 34 + 29) – saying after saying after saying, one after the other, some one-liners, some extended instructions, some parabolic-like illustrations. It is an amazing collection of Jesus’ teachings, by far his [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:00:04-04:00October 26th, 2022|Public Forum|

Can’t We Just Get Rid of Some of the Books of the Bible?

Here's an interesting question I received from a blog reader long ago! QUESTION: Given the criteria used to determine what would go on to constitute the New Testament canon, how is it that Hebrews and the book of Revelation remain part of the canon? I understand that Christians came to believe that they were authored by the apostles which is why they made it into the canon, but we now know that they weren't authored by Paul or John..so why are they still in the NT? RESPONSE: Interesting idea! I sometimes get asked what I would exclude from the canon if given the choice, and I almost always say 1 Timothy, because of what it says about women in 2:11-15, and how the passage has been used for such horrible purposes over the years. But, well, it ain’t gonna happen. I don’t get a vote. And that’s the problem with Hebrews and Revelation – and all the other books that were admitted when Church Fathers (wrongly) thought they were written by apostles of Jesus [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:59:48-04:00October 25th, 2022|Catholic Epistles, History of Christianity (100-300CE), Reader’s Questions|

Armageddon in Biden and the Bible

On Thursday October 6, President Biden made an unusually scary statement, in response to Putin’s threat of using nuclear weapons in Ukraine: "We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis." He then added: “I don’t think there’s any such thing as the ability to easily (use) a tactical nuclear weapon and not end up with Armageddon.” Armageddon has long been on my mind. As many of you know, my next book, coming out on March 12, is called Armageddon: What the Bible Really Says about the End. The book is obviously not about our current political-military crisis but about where the notion of Armageddon came from, how the view that it is very near has almost never done much good, but often created serious mayhem and harm, and why the conservative Christian understanding of it based on the book of Revelation is a complete misinterpretation. Biden wasn’t talking about that. But he was talking about how current events could indeed lead to cataclysmic disaster for the human race. [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:59:48-04:00October 23rd, 2022|Religion in the News, Revelation of John|

Little Known Aspects of The Golden Rule as Found in the Sermon on the Mount

Possibly the best-known teaching of Jesus is the Golden Rule, “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” Many people would consider this the very core of Jesus’ teaching, the one line that sums up his entire message about how people ought to behave and live their lives. And so it probably seems strange that there are scholars who doubt that he actually said it. Do they have good grounds for thinking so? In a later post I’ll consider a couple of the best arguments against thinking Jesus said it and then (spoiler alert!). I’ll explain why, in the end, I don’t find the arguments convincing. I think Jesus probably did say it, and even if he didn’t actually say it, I think it brilliantly encapsulates his message. In this post I’ll set up the discussion by explaining the first appearance of the words in any of our sources, i.e., the Gospel of Matthew. Before getting to the Gospel of Matthew, I should acknowledge that some of you might be thinking: of [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:59:48-04:00October 22nd, 2022|Public Forum|

What Does It Mean to Be an Active Research Scholar? Editing Scholarly Journals (And Why Is Peer-Review Important?)

Being a research scholar means a lot more than sticking your head in books and articles and churning out publications. Here I explain an area of pure volunteer work with little glory but lots of grind. ****************************** A Research Scholar's Editorial Work One aspect of the life of a professional scholar that may not be well known to the general public involves editorial work. For some scholars, this kind of work takes an enormous expenditure of time and effort, although much of the work, and many of the hours, are not transparent or evident to outsiders. I have done a lot of editorial work over the years, but I do not think that my case is at all exceptional. A lot of my colleagues have done less, but some have done a good deal more. Many scholars see editorial work as a major component of “service” to the discipline. Which means that, for the most part, it is really important but normally thankless! As is my wont I will use my own experience as a [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:59:48-04:00October 20th, 2022|Reflections and Ruminations|

Why Do Historians Treat Jesus Differently from Every Other Historical Figure?

I’m starting to think there must be a better way to explain to laypeople – and even to scholars – the best way we can show what the historical Jesus himself said and did. Since I was a graduate student I have done what every other budding New Testament scholar was doing: name the “criteria” that are used to show which elements of the Gospels are legendary and which are historical, explain their logic, justify them, and then use them. Now I’m starting to think that just ain’t the way to go. In case you don’t know, scholars use a set of criteria to decide what is authentic to the life of Jesus. The reason we need to do that is that we don’t have any audio or video recordings of his life, or stenographic accounts of his teachings, or highly reliable, fully documented, authoritative records of his activities. What we have are accounts written decades later (30-65 years later, at best), by people who did not know him, living in different parts of the [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:59:48-04:00October 19th, 2022|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus|

More Interesting Topics in New Testament Studies. Other Writing Assignments for my Undergrads

Here are more intriguing topics in New Testament studies! This is part two of the writing assignments that I give to my undergraduate course, “Introduction to the New Testament.” Every week students write a two-page paper based on the instructions, and then in their small group discussions (recitations) they discuss their views, as guided by the graduate student Teaching Assistant. So hey, go at it yourself! But, once again, I won’t be grading yours…. Note: every student is required to participate in one of the three debates, on a two-four person teacm arguing either the affirmative of negative side of the resolution. They are expected to prepare together individually and as a group, and everyone on the team is required to give a formal statement (opening statement of their teams position and arguments for it, rebuttal of the other team's argument, or summary at the end) (NTHI = my textbook, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings) [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:59:48-04:00October 18th, 2022|Christianity in the Classroom, Teaching Christianity|

October Gold Q&A

Dear Gold Members, How tempus fugits when you're havin' fun! Time for our October Gold Q&A. Have a question? Give it a shot. It can be anything related to the blog. To enter your question on to the list: send it to Diane at [email protected] The DEADLINE for your question is this Friday, October 21 midnight (whenever midnight is where you live). I will record the session soon thereafter and we'll get it released by October 27 or so. Questions that are short and to the point (a sentence or two) are more likely to be chosen. And feel free to ask a tough one. Outsmart Bart! Bart

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:00:04-04:00October 17th, 2022|Public Forum|

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