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Fifty Ways to Forge a Gospel

    Last month I attended a small conference on the early Christian apocrypha (that is, the Gospels, epistles, Acts, and Apocalypses from early Christianity that were not accepted into the canon of Scripture) at York University in Toronto.   The special topic for the conference was the use of forgery in early Christianity, and I was asked to give the keynote address. This is a topic, of course, I have been long interested in.   I spent several years working on my (rather long) scholarly monograph on the topic: Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics; and in the process or writing that book for fellow academics, I wrote a shorter and simpler account for popular audiences: Forged:  Writing in the Name of God.  Why the Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are. Among other things, in my talk I stressed that people in the ancient world considered forgery to be an act of literary deceit, a form of lying.  I really don’t think there should be much question [...]

2020-04-11T16:03:21-04:00November 22nd, 2015|Forgery in Antiquity, Public Forum|

Readers’ Mailbag November 20, 2015

It is time for my weekly Readers’ Mailbag.  I will be dealing with two questions this time.  If you have questions, about anything at all related to the historical Jesus, the New Testament, the history of early Christianity, or anything else that I may have a remote chance of knowing something about, please ask!  You can either respond with a comment/question to this post, or send me an email, or comment on any other post!   QUESTION:   An off-topic request: what are the five most puzzling questions about the historical Jesus you would love to see resolved in your lifetime? RESPONSE:   Ah, this is a tough one.  It is made particularly difficult by two competing phenomena.  The first is that most scholars of the historical Jesus are pretty convinced that their views about what he said and did are on the money.   So in that sense, what is there that can be answered that hasn’t been?  The other is the unpleasant reality that in fact we know very few things for certain about Jesus – [...]

The Beginning and End as Keys to the Middle

In my last post I showed why it is so widely acknowledged that Jesus began his ministry by associating with John the Baptist, an apocalyptic preacher of coming doom.   The reason that matters for our purposes in this thread is that it shows that Jesus chose, of his own free will, to join an apocalyptic movement at the very beginning of his public ministry.  That certainly demonstrates that Jesus started out his public life as a fervent advocate of a Jewish apocalyptic message.  He too must have been expecting the judgment of God soon to appear in which those aligned against God would be destroyed and those who sided with God would be rewarded. That in itself does not show, however, that Jesus’ own proclamation, after he got started, was apocalyptic.  Maybe he changed his mind!  Maybe he decided John was wrong!  Maybe he went his own direction! There are two arguments against the idea that he changed.  The first is one I have already recounted several posts ago: apocalyptic sayings are significantly attributed to [...]

2020-04-03T13:08:40-04:00November 19th, 2015|Historical Jesus, Paul and His Letters, Public Forum|

The Baptism of Jesus as an Apocalyptic Event

Over the years scholars have adduced lots of reasons for thinking that Jesus – like many others in his day – was a Jewish apocalypticist, one who thought that the world was controlled by forces of evil but that God was very soon going to intervene to overthrow everything and everyone opposed to him in order to set up a good kingdom here on earth.  As I pointed out in my previous post, this is the view found in Jesus’ teachings in Mark (e.g., ch. 13), in Q (the source used by Matthew and Luke for many of their sayings), in M (Matthew’s special source[s]), and in L (Luke’s special source[s]). There is another very good argument for thinking that Jesus must have subscribed to some kind of apocalyptic view (I’ll lay out what his exact views apparently were in a future post).  In fact, this argument is so good that I wish I had thought of it myself!  But alas, credit goes to others.  The argument, as I usually phrase it, is that “the [...]

2020-04-03T13:08:48-04:00November 18th, 2015|Historical Jesus, Public Forum|

Albert Schweitzer and the Apocalyptic Jesus

In the current thread I’m trying to establish that Jesus believed he was the messiah.  I have pointed out that his followers would not have considered him the messiah because they believed he had been raised from the dead (since the messiah was not supposed to die and rise again) unless they had already considered him the messiah prior to his death.  But that, of course, does not mean that Jesus *himself* thought he was the messiah.  And so we have to look for evidence from Jesus’ life that indicates that this is what he thought about himself, and my argument is going to be that there are several pieces of evidence that strongly suggest it is, of which my plan is to stress two. As background, in my previous post, I laid out the world view that Jesus himself almost certainly subscribed to, a view that scholars have called Jewish apocalypticism.  I need to develop these thoughts a bit in this post; and the next;  after that I’ll lay out in (very) summary fashion [...]

2020-11-07T23:49:29-05:00November 16th, 2015|Historical Jesus, Public Forum|

The Apocalyptic Context for Jesus’ View of the Messiah

In this thread I am trying to argue that Jesus understood himself to be the messiah.  So far I have made one of my two main arguments, with the understanding that *both* arguments have to be considered in order to have a compelling case.  So the first prong doesn’t prove much on its own.  But in combination with the second argument, it makes a strong case.  The first argument is that Jesus’ followers would not have understood him as the messiah after his death (as they did) unless they believed him to be the messiah before his death – even if they came to believe he had been raised from the dead, that would not have made them think he was the messiah.   I’ve explained why in my previous post. The second second involves showing that it was not only the disciples who understood Jesus to be the messiah before his death, but that Jesus himself did.  This is even harder to show, but I think there is really compelling evidence.  There are two major [...]

2020-11-08T00:05:18-05:00November 15th, 2015|Early Judaism, Historical Jesus, Public Forum|

Readers’ Mailbag November 13, 2015

It is time for the weekly Readers’ Mailbag.  I am keeping a list of questions readers have asked, and I add to it all the time.  If you have a question you are eager to hear me answer in a couple of paragraphs or so, simply ask!  One convenient way to do so is simply to make a comment/question on this post.  Here are three questions for today.   QUESTION:  The Wikipedia entry on the gospel of the Nasorenes mentions your work on the similarities between it and the Gospel of Matthew, could you briefly tell me what this is about? RESPONSE:  There are three Gospels that are frequently called the “Jewish-Christian Gospels,” because they were – according to the writings of the church fathers – used by Christians who self-identified as being, also, Jewish (e.g., by keeping the Jewish law and, possibly, insisting that to be a follower of Jesus a male had to be circumcised and males and females needed to keep the Sabbath, observe kosher food laws, and so on).  We do [...]

How Do We Know What Jesus Said About Himself?

Do we know what Jesus said about himself? Yesterday I started my two-prong argument for why Jesus probably considered himself the messiah.  The first prong is that Jesus must have been called the messiah during his lifetime, or it makes no sense that he would be called messiah after his death. Even if there were Jews who believed that Jesus was raised from the dead after he was crucified (as indeed there were!  Otherwise we wouldn’t have Christianity), the resurrection of a dead person would never lead anyone to say “Ah, he’s the messiah!”.  No one expected the messiah to be a resurrected person. So Jesus was being called the messiah before his death.  Otherwise, we can’t make sense of the fact that he was called the messiah after his (believed-in) resurrection. Do We Know What Jesus Said About Himself? Several readers have pointed out that this does not mean that Jesus *himself* thought of himself as the messiah.  It simply means that some of his followers did.  That is absolutely right.  I couldn’t agree [...]

2022-06-17T23:36:13-04:00November 12th, 2015|Historical Jesus, Public Forum|

Jesus, the Messiah, and the Resurrection

I have been talking about the early Christian understandings of Jesus as the messiah – not just the messiah, but the “crucified messiah,” a concept that would have seemed not just unusual or bizarre to most Jewish ears in the first century, but absolutely mind-boggling and self-contradictory.  I’ve been arguing that it was precisely the contradictory nature of the claim that led almost all Jews to reject the Christian claims about Jesus. Several readers have asked me whether I think Jesus understood himself to be the messiah.  Probably those who know a *little* bit about my work and my general views of things would think that my answer would be Absolutely Not.   But those who know a *lot* about my views will know that the answer is Yes Indeed. I think Jesus did consider himself the messiah.  But not the to-be-crucified-messiah.   The key to understanding Jesus’ view of himself is to recognize what he *meant* by considering himself the messiah.  I will get to that in a later post.  For now I want to give [...]

2020-04-03T13:09:23-04:00November 11th, 2015|Historical Jesus, Public Forum|

Another Problem with Calling Jesus the Messiah

I have been arguing that most Jews rejected Christian claims about Jesus because Jesus was just the *opposite* of what the messiah was expected to be.  The messiah was to be a figure of grandeur and power who would overthrow God’s enemies and set up a new kingdom on earth in which God’s will would prevail.  Jesus was and did none of that.  He was a lower-class peasant who was arrested, humiliated, tortured, and executed.  He didn’t destroy God’s enemies.  He was crushed by them. Paul is the first Jewish persecutor of the Christians that we know by name; there is really no doubt that he was bent on wiping out the followers of Jesus – since he himself says so (and says so to his own shame [Gal 1:13); he did not gain any glory for this rather despicable past) (despicable in both his eyes and the eyes of the Christians).  Presumably his reasons for hating and opposing the followers of Jesus were comparable to those of other Jewish persecutors. But Paul gives us [...]

2020-04-03T13:09:32-04:00November 9th, 2015|Paul and His Letters, Public Forum|

Jesus and the Messianic Prophecies – Did the Old Testament Point to Jesus?

In my previous post I started to explain why, based on the testimony of Paul, it appears that most Jews (the vast majority) rejected the Christian claim that Jesus was the messiah. I have to say, that among my Christian students today (most of them from the South, most of them from conservative Christian backgrounds), this continues to be a real puzzle. "But there were prophecies of Jesus being the messiah," they argue. "Hundreds of Old Testament passages, such as Isaiah 53, describe him to a tee." They genuinely can’t figure it out. What About Old Testament Messianic Prophecies? In their view, the Old Testament makes a number of predictions about the messiah: he would be born in Bethlehem his mother would be a virgin he would be a miracle worker he would be killed for the sins of others he would be raised from the dead These are all things that happened to Jesus!  How much more obvious could it be?  Why in the world don’t those Jews see it?   Are they simply hard-headed [...]

2019-10-30T15:05:21-04:00November 8th, 2015|Canonical Gospels, Early Judaism, Public Forum|

The Crucified Messiah in 1 Corinthians

Historians usually have reasons for what they say; that is, when they make a historical claim, it is almost always based on a close reading of the surviving sources.  When it’s not, they’re just blowin’ smoke.  But if they’re blowin’ smoke – that is, taking a guess –they’ll usually tell you.   I suppose that’s one difference between an expert (in any field) and an amateur: the expert actually has a deep and nuanced reading of the sources that informs his/her views. I have to say, as you probably have noticed in your own areas of expertise, it is pretty easy if you are an expert to know who else is an expert and who is not.  I say that as someone who is an expert in one or two areas, but an amateur in thousands.  When I have an interpretation of Hamlet or Lear that I bounce off my wife – who is a hard-core, internationally recognized expert on Shakespeare – I realize that, for the most part, I’m just taking a stab at something [...]

2020-04-03T13:09:50-04:00November 5th, 2015|Paul and His Letters, Public Forum|

The Jewish Messiah

In my previous post I began to discuss the understanding of Jesus as the Son of God, the Messiah, in the Gospel of Mark (this is a thread within a thread within a thread – but it doesn’t matter.  Each of these posts makes sense on their own).  I am trying to show that Mark portrayed Jesus as the Son of God (meaning:  the one who was in a particularly close relationship with God who was chosen by God to mediate his will on earth) and the messiah.  But he was the Son of God/Messiah whom no one understood.  Even his disciples. What though would it mean for first century Jews to think of someone as the messiah? Some serious background is necessary.  As I pointed out in my previous post, the word Messiah is a Hebrew term (the Greek equivalent is “Christ”) which meant “anointed one.”  Why would you call someone the anointed one? In Jewish circles the term goes back to a kind of royal ideology (i.e., understandings of the kingship) from centuries [...]

I’m Openly Secular Documentary

On May 2-3, 2014, the Freedom from Religion Foundation held a conference in downtown Raleigh “Freedom From Religion in the Bible Belt.” I gave one of the main addresses at the conference, and there were lot of other interesting speakers.  In addition to the public talks, the organizers taped a number of interviews, that were then put together into a kind of documentary format, found here.   My comments are interspersed throughout, along with those of the other participants. Other participants included: Randy Bender, a former Evangelical Lutheran Church of America pastor. Max Nielson, winner of FFRF’s 2012 Thomas Jefferson Student Activist Award, is one of 3 plaintiffs in FFRF’s lawsuit over unconstitutional graduation prayer at Irmo High School, S.C., and school board prayer. He founded a chapter of the Secular Student Alliance at the College of Charleson.   He has also interned as social media manger of the Secular Coalition and he remains a volunteer social media manager. Michael Nugent, founder and chair of Atheist Ireland. Michael flew in from Dublin to give an international flavor [...]

2020-04-03T13:10:13-04:00November 1st, 2015|Public Forum, Video Media|

Jesus as the Son of God in Mark

I am set now to return to my thread on the changes in our surviving manuscripts of the New Testament that were made in order to make the text more amenable to the theological agenda of orthodox scribes and to help prevent their use by Christians who had alternative understandings of who Christ was. I have been arguing, in that vein, that the voice at Jesus’ baptism in Luke’s Gospel originally said “You are my son, today I have begotten you” (as in some manuscripts) but that it was changed because scribes were afraid that the text could be too easily read to mean that it was at this point that God had adopted Jesus to be his son.  These scribes believed that Christ had *always* been the son of God, and so God could not say that he “made” him the son on the day of his baptism.  Their change was remarkably successful: the vast majority of manuscripts have their altered text, in which the voice says (as it says also in Mark’s version): [...]

2020-04-03T13:10:36-04:00October 30th, 2015|Canonical Gospels, Public Forum|

Reader’s Mailbag on Virgin Birth: 10/29/15

  Many thanks to everyone who responded to my queries about how we could make the Blog better.  I received some very good ideas, and one in particular that I want to implement, starting with this post.  That involves a weekly Reader’s Mailbag.  I get a lot of questions each week, and usually can only devote an occasional post to them.  Otherwise, all I can do is give a one-sentence or so response in my Comments.   But the idea that several people suggested was:  why not have a feature where, in a short directed response, I address interesting questions people raise?  I could do this every week.  The comments would not be as long as a full post, let alone a thread, but much fuller than I can make in my Comments section. I think it’s a great idea.  So I’m gonna try it.  My idea is that the questions should be short and to the point.   They can be on any topic involving the New Testament, the history of early Christainity, or any related [...]

An Irritating Criticism: My View of Paul’s View of Christ

QUESTION: Below is one Christian's comment about your position on Galatians 4:14.  How would you respond to this criticism:    "The question to ask of this is why make Galatians 4:14, with an interpretation not readily accepted by even non-Christian scholars, the lynchpin? What was it about this verse that made it the focal point, especially when Paul isn't really making a Christological argument there? Why not statements like Philippians 2 which is quoted? Note also that Philippians ends with every knee bowing and every tongue confessing that Jesus is Lord. That was reserved for YHWH alone. It also has Jesus being in the form of God, and that's a pretty clear statement about where Jesus ranks."   RESPONSE: I have to say, this kind of criticism REALLY gets under my skin.  You would think I’d have thicker skin by now. Just to unpack what is going on here a bit.  The (unnamed) critic is objecting to my view that the apostle Paul understood Christ, before coming into the world, to have been the great angel [...]

2020-04-03T13:11:00-04:00October 28th, 2015|Bart's Critics, Paul and His Letters, Public Forum|

Taking the Pulse of the Blog

The blog has now been in existence three and a half years now, and as I like to do a couple of times a year, I would like to take its pulse, to see if it is still alive and well among us, and to find out what, if anything, we can do to make it better.  I don’t think it is sick and in desperate need of hospitalization; in fact, from where I sit, it seems to be doing very well (see below).  But I want to know what *you* think, since you’re the ones who matter here.  I have some specific questions, set out in what follows. Since we started in April 2012, I have posted – every week, 52 weeks of the year – five or six times a week.   That’s a lot, but I still feel that I’m going strong and have lots to say (on that, see the specific questions).   I have to admit, over the past six months I have tended to move more toward five times a week [...]

2015-10-25T14:07:24-04:00October 25th, 2015|Public Forum|

My Big Day Appeal

I am taking executive privilege today with this posting.  It is a big day, not for the blog, but for me personally.  To my shock and amazement, today is my 60th birthday.  60 years.  How did this happen???  I’m glad it did, but still, I’m just askin’. So I want to use the occasion to make a shameless appeal.   I had a big birthday bash two nights ago, with friends and family flying in from such far-flung places as California and New Hampshire.  It was a terrific time, a friend from high school, friends from graduate school, friends I know professionally, friends who once-upon-a-time were my students, friends from my department, my daughter and son and son-in-law,  my granddaughters.  It was an amazing time. I made one request of everyone (in addition to the request to come to a party to enjoy good food, very good drink, and fantastic company): No presents! A couple of people stretched the rule a bit, and gave me a present.   They wrote a check for the Bart Ehrman Foundation [...]

2015-10-05T14:08:11-04:00October 5th, 2015|Public Forum|

Do I Have a Grudge Against Dr. Bruce Metzger?

QUESTION: A more personal question:  did you have a grudge against Dr. Bruce Metzger? I have always seen conservative textual critics and scholars pit you against Dr. Metzger's views. RESPONSE: When I first read this question I was very surprised indeed.  A grudge against Bruce Metzger??? Metzger, as many readers of this blog know, was my teacher and mentor, and I never had anything but the most profound and utmost respect for him, from the moment I first had the privilege of meeting him until the time of his death – and still today. Dr. Bruce Metzger - The Greatest New Testament Scholar in North America I don’t think there’s anyone in the known universe who would disagree that Bruce Metzger was the greatest NT textual scholar ever to come out of North America.  I first heard about him when I was an undergraduate at Wheaton College.  I was taking Greek there and began to be interested in pursuing the study of Greek manuscripts.  I knew that Metzger had been one of the five editors [...]

2022-12-31T16:29:47-05:00September 19th, 2015|Bart’s Biography, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|
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