Page 91 – The Bart Ehrman Blog

Christ as “Not God” in the Second Century: Early Jewish Adoptionists

You might think – and many people do think – that as Christianity developed, every Christian more or less went along with the “standard” or “orthodox” Christian beliefs that emerged. The term “orthodoxy” literally means “right beliefs” (or correct opinions); the word “heterodoxy” means “other opinions” (that is, other than the right ones!). A term often used alternatively for the latter is “heresy,” which literally means “choice,” used for people who “choose” to believe the wrong things. (!) As you might imagine, these are highly subjective terms A view is “right” (that is, orthodox) for you depending on what you personally believe. That’s because no one chooses to believe something they know is wrong. If they think it’s wrong, they change their view to what is right. But that means that everyone necessarily believes they are right, i.e. orthodox. Or as one wag put it, “orthodoxy is my doxy, and heterodoxy is your doxy.” That also means that it’s impossible to say that one group within early Christianity was absolutely right about everything (i.e. “orthodox”) [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:52:49-04:00March 10th, 2021|Early Christian Doctrine, Heresy and Orthodoxy|

Was Matthew Influenced by Buddhist Writings? Platinum Post by Steve Sutter

Platinum Members! Here is another guest post by Steve Sutter on interesting parallels between Buddhist writings and the Gospels. What do you think? Let him, me, and your fellow Platinum folk know! ALSO: The platinum-post well is running dry. Do you have something you'd like to contribute? Go for it! We'd all enjoy it and you can get your thoughts and ideas out there to a generous and welcoming public! It can be on anything related to the blog, if even remotely! But for now, here is Steve's post. ****************************** Matthew’s Gospel Tinged by Buddhism as Well It seems to me entirely possible that the authors of the Gospels of Luke and Matthew had knowledge of Buddhist scriptures while composing the content of their manuscripts in the late first century AD. Some parallels are very fascinating. Using a similar format as articles I published in the Fort Fairfield Journal November 18, 2020 and January 13, 2021, let me again share a sample of Buddhist scriptures, while pointing this time to verses in [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:53:04-04:00March 9th, 2021|Canonical Gospels, Platinums|

Where Did the Trinity Come From? The (Briefer) Video Version

Now that I've established that the earliest Christians came to think Christ was God (in some sense or other) and continued to think God was God, and yet thought there was only one God -- I am able to move into the thinking and debates based on those views that eventually led to the doctrine of the trinity. This seems like a good time to share a video produced five years ago or so in which I talk about the issue at a speaking gig I did at the Coral Gables Congregational Church in (as one would expect!) Coral Gables, Florida. I did this gig soon after my book was published: "How Jesus Became God." The lecture was the third in a series I did at the church. This was back when I did lectures in front of human beings instead of in front of a computer screen. Ah, the good ole days. On future posts on the blog I'll be going into considerably more detail, but this can give you the major nuts and [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:52:49-04:00March 9th, 2021|Early Christian Doctrine, Video Media|

The Doctrine of the Trinity: Where We Are So Far

I am in the middle of a very long thread dealing with the question of where the doctrine of the Trinity came from. I started the thread on January 7, here: https://ehrmanblog.org/is-the-trinity-in-the-bible/ , and so have been at it for nearly two months, on and off (with a other things thrown in en route, obviously). And I have gotten nowhere near, yet, to answering the question. So it goes in the world of complicated historical questions. (It is obviously a theological question, but I’m answering it historically rather than theologically). We are at a point where it would be a good time to explain where we are, why we have come this way, and where we are going. I need to begin by explaining why I have spent SO much time on the question of what it meant for early Christians to call Jesus God. It’s very simple really. Christians over time developed more and more exalted views of Jesus, from being a human messiah, to being a human sacrificed for the sins of others, [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:52:49-04:00March 7th, 2021|Early Christian Doctrine, Historical Jesus|

Another Weird Event in my Life that Led Me to Be a Research Scholar

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BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:52:48-04:00March 6th, 2021|Bart’s Biography, Public Forum|

God Showing Up a (Apparently) Human in the Hebrew Bible

So far in my posts on Christology I have talked a bit about pagan views of the divine realm and its relationship to the human. There is a lot more that could be said about that – in particular with the various ways that humans could be thought of as in some sense divine in the pagan world. But a lot of readers may be wondering what any of this has to do with Christianity since obviously the original followers of Jesus were Jewish, not Gentile, and their views of divinity in relationship to humanity would have been guided by Jewish traditions, such as those of the Old Testament. Fair enough! So before going any further, I thought I should make some posts about divinity in relationship to humanity in the Christian Old Testament. If God could look like a human in the OT, is that what's going on with Jesus? Was he God, but only looked human? This entire thread will be dealing with that kind of question. Interested? Join the blog! The [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:52:48-04:00March 4th, 2021|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament|

TWO Live Lectures This Sunday (We’ve Changed The Plan…)! How Do We Know about the Historical Jesus? and Jesus, The Apocalyptic Prophet

APOLOGIES for the earlier post. It was mistaken. Can you imagine? Here is the true, infallible, inerrant information! At last, you may say.... This Sunday, March 7, I will be giving TWO live Zoom lectures (not one) for anyone who wants to come. They will be recorded for my undergraduate course on the New Testament and there will be a 30-minute Q & A to follow the second one. Please NOTE the time; the first is at 2:00 p.m., second at 3:15 p.m. EST There is no charge per se, but I would like to ask for a donation to the blog in exchange, if you can see your way clear to do it. If not, that’s fine – we all have our circumstances! But one of the main reasons I’m doing these lectures is to raise money for the Food Bank of North Carolina; as with all food banks right now, it is in desperate need. Your donation is completely tax deductible. Here is the info you need: Time: Sunday, March 7, 2:00 pm [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:53:03-04:00March 3rd, 2021|Public Forum|

The Divine Realm in Antiquity (Appropriately: A Pyramid!)

In my previous posts I have been insisting that if one wants to say that “Jesus is God” according to an early Christian text, one has to ask “in what *sense* is he God? Now is a good time for me to lay out how I understand ancient people understood the divine realm. It was very different from the way most people today – at least the people I run across – imagine the divine realm. As I pointed out earlier, people today think of God as completely Other than us humans. We are mortal and limited in every respect; he is immortal and unlimited. He is all-powerful, all-knowing, and everywhere-present. We are by comparison weak, ignorant, and in one place at a time. He is infinite and eternal; we are finite and temporal. There is an unbridgeable gap between us and God. (Although in Christian theology, it is Jesus who bridges that gap by being a divine being who becomes human; in traditional theology, he did that so that we humans could then become [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:52:48-04:00March 3rd, 2021|Greco-Roman Religions and Culture|

Apologies about the Comments!

Many apologies to Silver, Gold, and Platinum members. We are having a technical difficulty with comments on posts. Ugh. But we're on it and will soon get it resolved.

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:53:03-04:00March 3rd, 2021|Public Forum|

Christian Attitudes toward War, Through the Ages: Platinum Post by Dan Kohanski

I am very pleased to have this interesting post on an unusually important topic for Platinum Members, produced by one of your own, Dan Kohanski. He tells me that the post has been adapted from part of a chapter, "When God Goes to War," in a book he is working on about the impact of Western religion on the world. I venture to say the information he presents here includes many things many of us do not know! Feel free to comment! (ALSO: I'm running short of future Platinum posts: if you can work one up, on any topic of relevance to anything we do -- a broad category -- please send it along) ********************* Shifts in the Christian Approach to War The earliest Christians had the mixed fortune to live under the Pax Romana, the peace of the Roman empire. On the one hand, they suffered from its harsh response to any insult to the state gods. On the other hand, the pax kept the peace. Early Christians could thus afford to argue that [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:53:03-04:00March 3rd, 2021|Platinums, Reflections and Ruminations|

The Stories We Tell: Guest Post by Robin Jones

As many of you know, a few months ago I invited my long time friend and erstwhile fellow-student at Moody Bible Institute, Robin Jones, to write a some posts for the blog. Robin continues to be an evangelical Christian and is deeply committed to important social issues that I think just about all of us are also concerned about: hunger, homelessness, suffering, and justice. Here now is her third and final post. I hope you find it both interesting and inspiring: ************************ Who doesn’t love a good story? Stories embody our humanity in a way few other things do. Some of you may be familiar with the radio commentator Paul Harvey who was famous for telling how an unknown twist of fate catapulted someone into a totally different life story or created a completely unexpected conclusion. After giving the surprise ending, he would famously conclude with “and that’s the rest of the story.” While Paul Harvey was indeed a great storyteller, I propose that the master at that craft was Jesus. He told stories [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:52:48-04:00March 2nd, 2021|Public Forum|

In What SENSE is Jesus “God” in Matthew, Mark, and Luke? My Change of Mind

In yesterday’s post I pointed out that if one asks about an early Christian text: “Does it portray Jesus as God,” then almost always if the answer is Yes (which it usually is), it has to be qualified: “Yes, in *some sense*. “ And the question is always, in *what* sense? The reason I stress this point is that for many years – until I dug deep into research for my book How Jesus Became God – I was quite vehement, in person and in print, that the Synoptic Gospels did not portray Jesus as divine, but only the Gospel of John did. It’s true – I still think and, I suspect, always will think – that in the Gospel of John there is little doubt about the divinity of Jesus. As we have seen, the Gospel opens with the amazing poem: “ In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things came into being through him, and apart from him nothing came into being [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:52:48-04:00February 28th, 2021|Canonical Gospels, Early Christian Doctrine, Public Forum|

What Did Ancient People Think It Meant To Call Someone God?

In the current threat I am building up to the question of where the Trinity came from. It was not the original Christian teaching. How then did it emerge as the "orthodox" view? I have started with the key issue, which is complicated enough on its own terms. How, why, and when did the followers begin to call Jesus God? That has been the posts up till now. The reason it matters for the thread is that calling Jesus God made Christians try to figure out how he could be God and God could be God yet there be only one God. The Spirit later got thrown into the mix as well, as we will see. But first I want to continue talking about the development of the view of Christ as God -- a very important development (THE most important development, one could argue) in early "Christology" (= the understanding of Christ). That is the entire topic of my fuller treatment in my book How Jesus Became God (on which also I made a Great [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:52:48-04:00February 27th, 2021|Early Christian Doctrine, Greco-Roman Religions and Culture|

Wanna Go to Croatia with Me?

I recently announced a tour I will be doing – Covid permitting – to Rome and Southern Italy this coming June. (See it here, with a brochure: https://ehrmanblog.org/interested-in-going-to-rome-with-me/) On the tour I’ll be giving lectures and hanging out for the ten days with everyone else; it should be great fun. For the sites we see we will have local tour guides who are flat-out experts on everything.. In this post I’m announcing a tour that will be coming directly on the heels of that one – again, Covid permitting. It is possible to come to either one, or both. Those who choose to do both will get a discount. Consider it buying in bulk. This second one will be to the Southwest coast of Croatia and nearby islands. This is one of the most gorgeous places in the known universe, and I’m particularly excited about it, because I’ve never been there. I’m drawn by the beauty but also by the medieval towns and, even more ancient, its connection with some very important [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:52:34-04:00February 25th, 2021|Public Forum|

More Live Lectures this Sunday: The Gospel of John and Early Christian Gnosticism!

This Sunday I will be giving two more live Zoom lectures on the Gospels to anyone who wants to come. They will be recorded for my undergraduate course on the New Testament. There will be a 30-minute Q & A to follow the second one. There is no charge per se, but I would like to ask for a donation to the blog in exchange, if you can see your way clear to do it. If not, that’s fine – we all have our circumstances! But one of the main reasons I’m doing these lectures is to raise money for the Food Bank of North Carolina; as with all food banks right now, it is in desperate need. Your donation is completely tax deductible. Here is the info you need: Time: Sunday, Feb. 28. 1:00 pm first lecture; 2:15 second (EST) Lectures will each last about 50 minutes. First Lecture: Jesus as a Divine Man in the Gospel of John This lecture goes to the heart of the Gospel John and its distinctive portrayal of [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:52:49-04:00February 24th, 2021|Public Forum|

An Intriguing but Most Peculiar Book! Guest Post by Kristin Swenson

A new book has just come out that many of you will be very interested in. It is called A Most Peculiar Book: The Inherent Strangeness of the Bible (Oxford University Press), by Kristin Swenson. I did not know Kristin until I learned of the book, some months before it was published. The publisher asked if I would write an endorsement for the cover. I usually have to say no to this kind of request, but I read the book and thought it was terrific. Here is what I said in my blurb: Do you think you know the Bible? Wait till you read Kristin Swenson’s new book. What if you don’t know the Bible at all? Even better. A Most Peculiar Book is a deeply informed, completely accessible, and endlessly fascinating explanation of what scholars know about the Bible and lay people, as a rule, do not. Read this book and prepare to learn! I received my copy a couple of weeks ago and contacted Kristin to ask if she’d be interested in writing a [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:52:48-04:00February 24th, 2021|Book Discussions, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

The Buddhist Scriptures and the Gospel of Luke: Platinum Post by Steve Sutter

Here is a second interesting post on the relationship of the Gospel of Luke to certain passages of the Buddhist Scriptures -- for you Platinum members only! Remember, if you would like to submit a post yourself, just write it up and send it to me via email: [email protected] We are almost at the end of the queue! So bring 'em on! But for now, Steven's intriguing comparisons (on two rather important Gospel passages!) *************************** In the November 18, 2020 issue of the Fort Fairfield Journal, I presented a plausible case (in my opinion) that there are similarities (parallels) between selected sayings and stories in ancient Buddhist scriptures and parts of the Gospel of Luke. Wrapping up my study project, let’s consider: (1) an additional story (The Temptation) and (2) an additional saying (The Golden Rule). The Temptation … Paul F. Knitter, a former Roman Catholic priest, in his recent book Without Buddha I Could not be a Christian, notes (p. 106) an encounter “uncannily similar” to what Jesus experienced right before beginning [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:52:49-04:00February 23rd, 2021|Public Forum|

My Interview About Jesus for “The Dagger Squad”

Now HERE is an interesting interview (at least I thought it was). Pretty unusual, in any case. Garfield A. Reid of Dagger Squad is a lively and interesting interviewer, and the call-ins had intriguing questions. The interview was entitled Jesus, New Testament, False Prophecies, and False Doctrines; it happened on Monday, February 8, 2021. See what you think! Please adjust gear icon for 720p High-Definition:

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:52:34-04:00February 23rd, 2021|Public Forum, Video Media|

Is the “Word” (Logos) of God in John the Wisdom (Sophia) of God in Judaism?

In yesterday’s post I began to discuss the Prologue of the Gospel of John, which contains a poem that celebrates Christ as the Word of God that became human. This Word of God was with God in the beginning of all things, and was himself God; through him the universe was created and in him is life. This word took on flesh to dwell with humans, and that human – the divine word made flesh – was Jesus. Some readers over the years have wondered if this celebration of the Logos of God that becomes flesh owes more to Greek philosophy than to biblical Judaism. It’s a good question, and hard to answer. One thing that can be said is that this Logos idea does find very close parallels with other biblical texts – in particular with texts that speak of the Wisdom (Greek: Sophia) of God. Sophia and Logos are related ideas; both have to do in some respect with “reason.” Sophia is reason that is internal to a person; Logos is that reason [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:52:48-04:00February 21st, 2021|Canonical Gospels, Early Christian Doctrine, Early Judaism, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament|

A Christian Is Not Necessarily a Disciple (Monthly Platinum Post: Douglas Wadeson)

As many of you know, one of the perqs of being a Platinum member of the blog is that at this level everyone is given the opportunity to make a post of their own, distributed only to Platinum members. For these posts, members can talk about nearly anything they want, so long as it is related to the blog and not grievously snarky. So far, we haven't had a snark at all. I post one of these a week, and then once a month, I choose one to post on the blog itself for all readers. Or rather, I have the Platinum members themselves vote on which one they think should go public This is our first one. It comes to us from Douglas Wadeson, a long time member of the blog and recently retired (lucky fellow) physician. The post came in two parts: here I will be giving only the first (I won't be posting the second: the Platinums will be voting on a different set of posts next time.) Feel free to comment [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:52:34-04:00February 20th, 2021|Reflections and Ruminations|

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