Page 85 – The Bart Ehrman Blog

Prophecies and Saints in the Book of Daniel. Platinum Guest Post by Daniel Kohanski

I am very pleased to post this interesting and informed post by Platinum member Daniel Kohanski, on one of the most intriguing books of the entire Bible -- and as he points out, one of the most frequently misunderstood, especially today. This post is for Platinum Members Only. Feel free to comment and query! ****************************** The book of Daniel is one of the most influential, probably the most controversial, and certainly the most incomprehensible book of the Hebrew Bible. It is particularly famous for two things. It culminates in the only explicit expectation of personal resurrection in Scripture, and it uses a combination of mystical passages and obscure calculations to make that expectation credible. The intention was to convince the reader that Daniel (or an angel telling Daniel) had accurately predicted events hundreds of years in advance. In fact, all of them but the death of Antiochus and the promised resurrection had already happened by the time the author sat down to finish this book--because he was using a technique known to scholarship as vaticinium [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:54:36-04:00July 13th, 2021|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament|

Understanding Revelation: A Sine Qua Non (Overlooked by most readers)

I am at the beginning of my thread on the book of Revelation, and am giving the background necessary to make sense of how I now make sense of the book, which is different from how I've made sense of it most of my life! But one thing I wholeheartedly agree with myself on from earlier days: you HAVE to understand the book in its own historical context or you will completely misconstrue its meaning -- as almost everyone does, since they think it is a book written for the 21st century instead of the 1st. That's a big mistake if you have any interest in what an author of the 1st century was saying to his audience of the 1st century. You have to understand the literary conventions and historical realities of their time. Seems obvious, but, well, I guess it's not to most readers.... In my previous post I began to stress the importance of knowing what an “apocalypse” is before trying to interpret any one particular apocalypse. Today I pursue that a [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:54:20-04:00July 13th, 2021|Revelation of John|

Metzger, the Squirrel, and Me (…and Jesus).

In my previous post I talked about the locally famous story about (my teacher) Bruce Metzger and the dead (dying?) squirrel. Here I continue the story to show why in fact is has some relevance to the New Testament! As I indicated, for years friends of mine were eager for me to find out whether the story about Metzger and the squirrel really happened. They wanted me just to ask Metzger. But there were problems with that. Among other things, if it had happened, he almost certainly wouldn’t remember, since it would have simply been something that happened with no significance to him – only to the one who thought it was very odd that Metzger would happen to know the Greek word for squirrel and that he would volunteer it at that rather inauspicious moment. Moreover, there were aspects of the story that did not “ring true.” Metzger was not heartless toward other living beings and he was not one to boast about his knowledge about Greek -- or about anything else. Years later [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:54:20-04:00July 11th, 2021|Bart’s Biography, Historical Jesus, Reflections and Ruminations|

My Mentor Bruce Metzger and the Infamous Squirrel

I often get asked about my relationship with my Doktor Vater Bruce Metzger, an unbelievably knowledgeable textual scholar and Bible translator. In response I've started re-posting some recollections I have. I was his final PhD student and, I daresay, had a closer relationship with him than probably any other. In this post I talk about the most famous anecdote about him that floated around Princeton for decades. As with all great men, Metzger was widely talked about among those who knew and revered him. There were lots of stories told about Metzger at Princeton Seminary. Someone should probably collect and publish them. I was especially interested in the stories, since I came to Princeton in order to study with him. Most of the stories were meant to be funny, and we always wondered which, if any of them, were “true” (in the sense that they really happened). Far and away the most commonly told and best known story was the one I heard when I first arrived at the seminary in 1978. It is the [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:54:20-04:00July 10th, 2021|Reflections and Ruminations|

Gold Q&A for July 2021!

Dear Gold Members, It is that time again! As you know, one of the perks of your elevated status as a gold member of the blog is that you are provided an audio Q&A once a month for gold members only. You provide written questions, I answer as many as I can, and I release the audio recording to gold members only. Have a question to ask? The sky's the limit. Go for it. I will be recording the next Q&A on Saturday July 24to be released Tuesday July 27. Send your question(s) to our blog COO, Diane Pittman, at [email protected]. The deadline is midnight (in whatever time zone you're in) Thursday July 22 . The best questions are only a sentence of two long at most. I hope to hear from you! Bart

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:54:36-04:00July 9th, 2021|Public Forum|

How I Take Notes When Doing Research for a Book

A couple of weeks ago when I first talking about my work on the next book dealing with Revelation, I was asked how I actually go about doing the research -- in particular, how I take notes on what I read. It's a big deal for any author: how does one keep track of the research? I discussed the issues a few years ago right after I had finished drafting my book Heaven and Hell, and thought it might be worth reposting now. Here 'tis: ****************************** Now that I have finished writing the draft of my book on the afterlife – which I’m tentatively titling “Heaven, Hell, and the Invention of the Afterlife (that will be the title until my publisher changes it!!) – I have received several questions from blog members about aspects of the writing itself. One reader wanted to know how I keep track of all the things that I read in preparation for writing a book like this (or like anything else). Here is how: When I decide what the [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:54:20-04:00July 8th, 2021|Book Discussions, Reader’s Questions, Reflections and Ruminations|

Apocalypse (the genre) and Apocalypticism (the worldview)

I have started to give some background on the book of Revelation, to help set the stage for my new understanding of it as it has developed over the past year. Much of what I think now is what I've thought for 45 years. But the deeper I've dug, the more I've seen and the more I've come to realize that my older perspective (a widely held one among scholars) has some serious flaws (as others too have seen). But none of these new insights affects my basic view, that to understand this mysterious book we have to do what almost NO ONE in the modern world does (except scholars): understanding it in its own historical context in light of what we know of its historical and, especially, literary context. If you change the context, you change the meaning. And nowhere is that more obvious than in the book of Revelation. In the last post I summarized the narrative (urging you to read it for yourself) (if you prefer to listen to it, make sure [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:54:20-04:00July 7th, 2021|Early Judaism, Revelation of John|

The Book of Revelation and the END. Starting at the Beginning.

The Book of Revelation! I am ready now to start a new thread on my thoughts on the book, as I get serious about writing about it for a general audience. I mentioned a couple of weeks ago (see blog for June 20) that I had changed my mind rather radically about what my book was going to cover. I’ll explain the current plan (hopefully the *final* plan) in later posts. For now it would be important to start at the beginning so we are all on the same page. And so in this post I want to review – or introduce, in case you’re not familiar with it – the contents of the book of Revelation itself, more or less free of interpretation. It’s not a long book, and can be read in one sitting. (Twenty-one chapters, but most are very short.) If you’re interested, go ahead and read it (for the first time or again!). You’ll pick up something new every time. Or at least I do, now in my 50th year of [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:54:20-04:00July 6th, 2021|Revelation of John|

Memories of Bruce Metzger: When I First Realized I Couldn’t Write

In my last post I started to resume my recollections of my mentor, the great textual scholar Bruce Metzger. In this post I recall when he first showed me I was a lousy writer. In graduate school different professors have different approaches to evaluating and grading term papers. Some professors are completely anal about it and insist on correcting every mistake, rewriting every sentence, and reformulating every idea. Not many are that way, thankfully, since doing all this takes an enormous chunk of time (and a very large ego). I never had a professor like that, but I have known some over the years. Others make extremely judicious and helpful comments, sometimes at great length. My teacher Paul Meyer was like that at Princeton Seminary. The comments he made on our papers were in depth, always on target, and superior in quality to any of the scholarship we read all semester in the class. Meyer never published much himself – he threw himself into his students instead; we used to threaten to extract his comments [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:54:20-04:00July 4th, 2021|Bart’s Biography, Reflections and Ruminations|

My Mentor Bruce Metzger

Many years ago on the blog I was asked about my relationship with my mentor Bruce Metzger, an internationally famous scholar of the New Testament who is generally acknowledged as the greatest expert on biblical manuscripts in America, ever. He was also a devout Christian, an ordained Presbyterian minister. I, obviously, am not. (Though I was very much a committed Christian when I first met him.) Here is the question and my initial response. QUESTION: Hey Bart, I know you studied under Bruce Metzger and my question is how did he feel about your skepticism toward the trustworthiness of the N.T? RESPONSE: Bruce Metzger and I had a long and very close relationship. I was his student for seven years and his research assistant for the New Revised Standard Version (he was the chair of the translation committee) for a couple of years. He directed my masters and PhD theses; he helped me break into publishing; he worked to get me into editorial positions for journals and monograph series; he guided my research [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:54:19-04:00July 3rd, 2021|Bart’s Biography, Reflections and Ruminations|

Was Jesus Like One of the Pagan Fertility Gods?

Lots of people (esp. on the Internet!) say that the stories of Jesus' death and resurrection were modeled on widespread beliefs in the pagan world of "fertility" gods, whose life-cycle dictates the fertility of the earth. They are born (spring); they become productive as the earth becomes fertile (summer); they become ripe for harvest (autumn); and then they die (winter). But they "rise again" (spring) and the pattern then repeats itself. Wasn't Jesus like that? That is the question I was asked in this final segment in my interview with Ben Witherington, a prominent evangelical biblical scholar. Ben and I don't agree about a lot when it comes to religion, and have crossed academic swords in public contexts. But we have an amicable relationship and agree on some very basic things. For example: Jesus existed! Hey, it's a start. And we agree a lot on the relationship of Jesus to Judaism and the need to situate him in his own Jewish context (rather than some mythical pagan context). And so, here is the final question [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:54:19-04:00July 1st, 2021|Greco-Roman Religions and Culture, Historical Jesus|

Blog Dinner in London?

If you're a blog member and are either in or able to get to London just now: are you interested in getting together for a blog dinner? If we can get 3-4 (or more!) people together, I'd be happy to do it. It would need to be one of the evenings of Sunday July 11 to Thursday July 15. In either central London or Wimbledon (where I reside when over here). No obligations other than: Being a blog member Showing up Talking Paying for your meal. If you're interested, do NOT reply here as a comment. Send me an email at [email protected] If you're not around here just now, hey, our day may come!

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:54:36-04:00June 30th, 2021|Public Forum|

Other Gods Who Died and Rose from the Dead?

Here I continue with the Q&A I had years ago with evangelical New Testament scholar Ben Witherington, focused on my book Did Jesus Exist. I think I can say with relative confidence that this is the ONE book of mine that evangelicals on the whole were (mainly) pleased with. A nice change! And why do they like it? Because I argue there must have been a man Jesus. OK, then! Doesn't seem like a lot to be grateful for, but I'll take what I can get. Ben's questions were more astute than that, dealing with some of the key issues at a scholarly level. Here are two more of them, and my responses. Q. It appears that mythicists have not read Jonathan Z. Smith, and do not realize that there is no unambiguous evidence for the historical argument that ancients believed in dying and rising gods before the time of Jesus, and that therefore the story of Jesus is just a historicized version of that myth. Why do you think this theory of dying and rising [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:54:19-04:00June 30th, 2021|Book Discussions, Historical Jesus|

Some Intriguing Questions about Jesus’ Predictions and Mental Health

I've gotten a lot of terrific questions over the years on the blog, and looking through old posts, I came upon this one dealing with two of them, both on Jesus and his immediate followers. I thought they were worth addressing again. Both of these, as it turns out, deal with issues related to psychology and the early Christian movement: one has to do with why the followers of Jesus didn’t simply give up and disband when the end-of-the-world-apocalypse they had been anticipating didn’t happen (so that they were proven to be *wrong*) and the other about whether Jesus was, literally, crazy. Interesting questions! If you have one you would like me to address, just ask in a comment on any of my posts. QUESTION I get that when the Apocalypse didn’t happen as the apocalyptic Jesus had predicted that a kind of reinterpretation of events including the resurrection took place. But why? Why didn’t the fledgling fringe then Jesus-Jewish (my term) sect simply die out? RESPONSE Ah, this is a meaty question [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:53:51-04:00June 29th, 2021|Public Forum, Reader’s Questions, Reflections and Ruminations|

An Unusual Interview with an Ex-Muslim, Informed, Atheist

Now *this* isn't the kind of interview I get asked to do every day! Hanny Seylim is a former Muslim who split his time growing up between Egypt and Ireland (a parent from each) and now lives in Melbourne. For his podcast, Critical Faculty, he interviews all sorts of critical thinkers in numerous different fields (physics to NT!). Hanny knows a *lot* about early Christianity and wanted to interview me about my work. I think this one is unusually good. Enjoy!

FreedomBen2025-09-10T12:54:05-04:00June 27th, 2021|Public Forum|

Fiction and Fact, Legend and History. Is it Either / Or?

This now is the 7th of 10 parts of my interview with Ben Witherington on my book Did Jesus Exist. Here there are two interesting questions, both focusing on the relationship of legend and history in ancient stories about Jesus. Part of the question is whether the Gospel writers were simply riffing on (or, more cynically, ripping off) earlier stories of other amazing figures when talking about Jesus; the other is whether that has a significant bearing on how we understand what he said and and did -- or on whether we think he even existed. Q. Robert Price's argument that the stories of Jesus are a giant midrash on OT stories about Moses and others, and so are completely fiction seems to ignore the fact that midrash is a hermeneutical technique used for contemporizing pre-existing stories. Talk briefly about the difference between how stories are shaped in the Gospels and whether they have any historical substance or core or not. (N.B. It appears that Crossan has recently made the same kind of category mistake arguing [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:54:19-04:00June 26th, 2021|Book Discussions, Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus|

Texts and Towns that Allegedly Didn’t Exist (So Did Jesus?)

Here I continue to answer questions from my evangelical colleague in the field, Ben Witherington, as addressed some years ago, These again deal with the claims of "Mythicists," who insist that there never actually was a man Jesus, but that he is simply made up, a complete myth. One way they support their point is by saying that some passages in the ancient world that mention him in fact are later "interpolations" into the original writings (that is, some nefarious editor stuck references to Jesus into a text that originally didn't mention him) and that his hometown, Nazareth, actually did not exist at the time. Is either claim credible or, well, supported by any actual *evidence*? Here are Ben's queries and my responses. Q. Mythicists seems to often uses the interpolation theory to explain away NT texts that are inconvenient to their agendas. Yet it is also true that some NT scholars use interpolation theories to the very same end, even when there is apparently no textual basis for the interpolation theory. Explain how [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:54:05-04:00June 24th, 2021|Book Discussions, Historical Jesus, New Testament Manuscripts|

How Do We Know If Jesus Did Something?

This post continues my 10-part interview with Ben Witherington dealing with "mythicists," those who claim that there never actually *was* a man Jesus, but that he is a complete fabrication, a myth. In Did Jesus Exist, I try to show why that is simply not true. But if he did exist, and the Gospels say things about him that probably didn't happen, how do you separate the fact from the fiction? Here Ben asks me questions related to that idea, and I give some responses. Q. Various mythicists have tried to argue that in fact there is only one source, namely Mark, that provides evidence that Jesus existed and presumably he made up the idea? Why is this not a fair representation of the evidence, and why do you think it is that various of them hardly even deal with the evidence from Paul? A. Most mythicists claim that Paul never mentions the historical Jesus or says anything about him, but that he only speaks of a “mythical Christ” who was not a real human [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:54:05-04:00June 23rd, 2021|Book Discussions, Historical Jesus|

Some Key Evidence for Jesus

I continue here with the conversation I had some years ago with evangelical New Testament scholar Ben Witherington, based on my book Did Jesus Exist. In this post, we start getting into some of the key evidence we have for Jesus, not only to show that he actually existed (uh, yes he did...) but also to help us know what we can say about him, about what he really said and did. Q (Witherington). In the middle portion of your book, you place a great deal of emphasis on what is usually called the criteria of multiple attestation to demonstrate that Jesus surely existed. Would you explain briefly why historians place so much stock in this criteria, and why it is especially important when dealing with the question of the existence of Jesus. A. Multiple attestation is one of the most important historical criteria for establishing what happened in the past – not just for historical Jesus research, but for any serious historical research. If the sources to a historical person or event are [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:54:05-04:00June 22nd, 2021|Book Discussions, Historical Jesus|

Why My Book on Revelation Has Been Different To Write

As many of you know, my next book is on the Revelation of John, to be written not for scholars but for a general audience. I decided I wanted to write the book maybe four years ago, and my ideas about it have changed significantly since I began to think about it. Part of that is because the book is, as Bob Dylan says, “a slow train coming.” My original plan was to have the book finished by now. In fact, that was the publisher’s plan too. This is the first time in my mortal existence that I’ve been seriously behind on a book deadline. Usually, I finish way ahead of time. Not with this one. There are several reasons for that and I won’t bore you with them since virtually everyone I know has had the same problems: Covid burnout, too much work, and too little time. BUT the positive side of it all is that with this book I’m allowing myself time to think and reflect without a definite plan. It’s a new [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:54:05-04:00June 20th, 2021|Book Discussions, Reflections and Ruminations|

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