Public Forum Archives - Page 62 of 72 - The Bart Ehrman Blog

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Guest Post – Brent Nongbri on Manuscript Discoveries

Today we have a guest post – another one from Brent Nongbri, who, if you remember, did his PhD in New Testament at Yale and is currently an Australian Research Council (ARC) Research Fellow in the Department of Ancient History at MacQuarie University in Sydney Australia. He is one of the leading researchers on ancient manuscripts in the world, and among his other many fine virtues, is a member of the blog. He's also the author of Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept and God's Library: The Archaeology of the Earliest Christian Manuscripts. You may recall that I raised the question a week or ten days ago about why archaeologists don’t set out to find manuscripts any more, the way Grenfell and Hunt did in the late 1890s, leading to the spectacular discovery of the Oxyrhynchus papyri, in a trash heap outside of the city of Oxyrhynchus, a discovery that was so massive that scholars are still publishing the uncovered papyri today. Brent has the answer. Here’s what he has to say. [...]

BDEhrman2020-05-26T13:41:03-04:00June 28th, 2015|Public Forum|

Kickstarting a Debate

I periodically get asked to have a public debate with a mythicist on the question of their real concern: Did Jesus Exist? I have regularly declined these offers, for a variety of reasons: The question is not really a matter of dispute among experts, even though mythicists as a rule would like it to be and sometimes even insist it is. But the reality is this: if you were to look at the program of the annual meeting of (the many thousands of English-speaking) professors of Biblical Studies, the Society of Biblical Literature meeting (this year in Atlanta), you will not find a session (out of thousands) devoted to arguing both sides of this issue. That’s because there is no debate. There is debate generated by the mythicists themselves, of course, and in recent years there have been two bona fide scholars in relevant fields (out of the tens of thousands of scholars in relevant fields) who have become outspoken in support of a mythicist view. But like it or not (most mythicists don’t) (quite [...]

BDEhrman2017-11-29T21:34:43-05:00June 26th, 2015|Bart's Debates, Mythicism, Public Forum|

The Dead Sea Scrolls

In my previous several posts I discussed the discovery and contents of the Nag Hammadi Library. A lot of people on the blog know about all that, since it is a major topic of discussion among scholars of early Christianity. But the reality is that among the general populace, no one really knows about it. People may have heard about the “Gnostic Gospels,” but they don’t realize that there is such a *thing* as the Nag Hammadi Library (or, obviously, why it is called that). On the other hand, everyone has heard of the Dead Sea Scrolls, even if they have no clue what the scrolls are, what they contain, and how they were found. The Dead Sea Scrolls are by virtual consensus the most significant manuscript discovery of the twentieth century. And they are decidedly *not* to be confused with the Nag Hammadi Library! Here is what I say about the scrolls in my New Testament textbook. (These paragraphs actually say more about the Essenes that produced the scrolls than the scrolls themselves.) [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T13:35:36-04:00June 23rd, 2015|Early Judaism, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Public Forum|

Mark Goodacre: Questioning the Discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library

A few days ago I posted about the Discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library, giving the remarkable story that scholars -- for as long as I myself have been a scholar -- have been telling about how it happened. I also mentioned that my New Testament colleague at Duke, Mark Goodacre – who is on this blog and who has an important blog of his own, as well as the most important website on the New Testament on the entire Internet – has written an article calling this story into question. I asked Mark if he would be willing to summarize his objections to the story as it is typically recited, and he has done so in the following post. In my next post I will respond to his objections, and then Mark will respond to my response. Isn’t scholarship great? Here’s Mark’s post on the matter: - Mark Goodacre is the author of several books, including The Case Against Q, and Thomas and the Gospels. ************************************************************************** Five Reasons to Question the Story [...]

BDEhrman2021-01-29T02:33:30-05:00June 20th, 2015|History of Christianity (100-300CE), Public Forum|

What I Saw at St. Catherine’s Monastery

In my last post I began to relate an anecdote about a traveling adventure I had several years ago, when giving lectures for a UNC trip to Egypt and Jordan with a stop at the famed St. Catherine’s monastery in the southern part of the Sinai peninsula, the place where Tischendorf had discovered the biblical manuscript codex Sinaiticus in the mid 19th century, and where a fire at the monastery in the 1970s had uncovered a hidden room found to contain manuscripts, including the pages from the Old Testament of the codex Sinaiticus that Tischendorf had not come away with from the monastery when he took the bulk of the manuscript with him back to Russian. (That is the longest sentence I’ve ever produced on the blog; it’s because I’m reading Proust right now….) For me, one of the highlights of this trip was to be a visit to the monastery, a place that I had wanted to see for years. It is located in a completely barren location in the wilderness and is the [...]

BDEhrman2017-11-29T21:37:49-05:00June 15th, 2015|Bart’s Biography, New Testament Manuscripts, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

How Are Manuscripts Discovered

PLEASE NOTE: I am incommunicado for a few days on a gulet in the Aegean Sea on the west coast of Turkey. I have asked Steven, our blog support, to add some posts for me in my absence; I prepared these in advance knowing I would be out of reach. Here is one of them. I’m afraid I will not be able to respond to comments on the next few posts until I return to some form of civilization that supports Internet and all things electronic. So sorry! **************************************************** In this thread I have been discussing documents from early Christianity that I would very much like to have discovered. In my last post I mentioned the fact that documents that *do* tend to be discovered are either texts that we already have copies of (the Gospel of John, the book of Revelation, etc.) or of books that we did not previously know existed (the Letter of Diognetus, or most of the writings in the Nag Hammadi library). Here is a related question from a reader [...]

BDEhrman2017-11-29T21:40:09-05:00June 11th, 2015|Heresy and Orthodoxy, History of Christianity (100-300CE), Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

The Discovery of Lost Documents

PLEASE NOTE: I am incommunicado for a few days on a gulet in the Aegean Sea on the west coast of Turkey. I have asked Steven, our blog support, to add some posts for me in my absence; I prepared these in advance knowing I would be out of reach. Here is one of them. I’m afraid I will not be able to respond to comments on the next few posts until I return to some form of civilization that supports Internet and all things electronic. So sorry! **************************************************** I’ve been discussing lost books from early Christianity that I very much wish would be discovered. Like everyone else interested in this field, I would of course love to have *all* the now-lost books to be turned up. Unfortunately, we probably don’t even know what the majority of the lost books even were, and have no concrete reason for thinking that they ever existed. Here is a related question that a member of the blog asked a couple of weeks ago: QUESTION: What do you think are the odds that a really startling discovery like [...]

BDEhrman2017-11-29T21:40:21-05:00June 10th, 2015|New Testament Manuscripts, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

Lecture: Jesus and the Historian

On Tuesday, February 25, 2014 I gave a lecture at Dickinson College (Carlisle Pennsylvania) on "Jesus and the Historian," in the Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium. In the lecture I deal with the historical problems posed by the surviving Gospels for evaluating the evidence for the life and teachings of Jesus. Please adjust gear icon for 720p High-Definition (The quality is not as good as one might hope, but it's the best we can do given the original source)

BDEhrman2017-11-29T21:42:28-05:00June 7th, 2015|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus, Public Forum, Video Media|

My Trip to Turkey

I am en route to Istanbul now with a layover, at this moment, as we speak, in London’s Heathrow airport. I’ll be in Turkey for nearly three weeks. This is a trip sponsored by my home institution, the General Alumni Association of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. As is true of most universities, UNC has a vibrant travel program for alumni. Trips can be on the expensive side, but they are usually fantastic. As the guest lecturer, I get a free trip out of it. There are four people connected with the blog on the trip (maybe more: but there are four that I know of so far). (It may seem strange, but one does not have to be an alum of the university to go on an alumni trip!) It is intentionally a small group, just twenty-five of us. Turkey is one of the great places on earth, with a massive and varied cultural history. My lectures concern only one small part of the Turkish legacy. As it turns out, this [...]

BDEhrman2017-11-29T21:44:01-05:00June 3rd, 2015|Bart’s Biography, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

How the Bible Explains Suffering – Video

On September 8, 2008 I gave a lecture at the University of California Berkeley. The lecture was titled "God's Problem and Human Solutions: How the Bible Explains Suffering." It was part of the Foerster Lectures on the Immortality of the Soul. It is an interesting lecture series. Established in 1928 by Edith Zweybruck, The series is devoted to lectures that in the words of the founding document) are to be "on the immortality of the soul or other kindred subjects. Such lecture is not to form a part of the regular college course and shall be delivered by some person especially qualified therefore and especially appointed for the purpose." My lecture does not, obviously, deal with directly with the question of immortality, but with another question of deep importance, suffering. I was introduced on the occasion by a very fine scholar of Christianity in Late Antiquity, whom I have known for years, Susanna Elm, Professor in the Department of History, UC Berkeley. Please adjust gear icon for better definition.

BDEhrman2017-12-09T08:20:34-05:00May 16th, 2015|Public Forum, Video Media|

Misquoting Jesus Interview on WPSU

On March 15, 2007, I had an interview with Patty Satalia for a Pennsylvania State University on Demand Program called "Pennsylvania Inside Out," on my book "Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why" . In the interview I discuss how the modern Bible was shaped by mistakes and intentional alterations that were made by early scribes who copied the texts. I also explain how realizing this led me to shift my way of thinking about the Bible. We also get into the question -- then very pressing still -- about Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code. It seems so long ago now that everyone was talking about it! Please adjust gear icon for 720p High-Definition:

BDEhrman2017-12-09T08:25:00-05:00May 2nd, 2015|History of Christianity (100-300CE), New Testament Manuscripts, Public Forum, Video Media|

York Symposium on Early Christian Apocrypha

I thought some of you might be interested to know about a symposium focusing on early Christian apocrypha that will be taking place in the fall. The schedule for the event has just been sent. If any of you is near there, you should think about going! It looks terrific. It is being organized principally by Tony Burke, along with Brent Landau; they are two very active scholars in the field of apocrypha studies. Here’s what the lineup looks like. *************************************************************** Fakes, Forgeries, and Fictions: Writing Ancient and Modern Christian Apocrypha The 2015 York University Christian Apocrypha Symposium will take place September 24-26 at Vanier College, York University. The specific objectives for the 2015 Symposium are: 1. to examine the possible motivations behind the production of Christian Apocrypha from antiquity until the present day, 2. to integrate medieval and modern apocrypha (composed in the 19th to 21st centuries) into the wider study of apocryphal literature, and 3. to reflect on what the reactions to the recently-publishedGospel of Jesus’ Wife can tell us about [...]

BDEhrman2017-12-09T08:25:27-05:00May 1st, 2015|Christian Apocrypha, Heresy and Orthodoxy, History of Christianity (100-300CE), Public Forum|

My New Project on Memory

I am going to take a break from my thread that has been dealing with which books from Christian antiquity I would most like to have discovered. I haven’t gotten very deep into the thread: basically my answers so far have been: the lost letters of Paul, the letters of Paul’s opponents, and Q. There are a lot more that I’d like to discuss, and will discuss relatively soon. But for now I’m going to break off into something else, because I am at a crucial point of my research/writing and I want to deal with that for a while. As many of you know, I have spent almost all my research time for more than a year now working on issues of memory. I have now read all that I need to read for my next book, a trade book for a general audience, on how Jesus was “remembered” by early Christians in the decades before any of the Gospels were written. My plan is to start writing on Tuesday. Gods willing, I’ll have [...]

BDEhrman2017-12-09T08:41:20-05:00March 29th, 2015|Book Discussions, Memory Studies, Public Forum|

Trip to Turkey?

This coming June I will be going on a tour sponsored by the UNC Alumni Association to Turkey for two weeks, giving lectures on the apostle Paul (who established churches there). (Actually I'll be there three weeks, since there is an "extension" of the tour that some folks are going on to Cappadocia, a truly amazing place.) It is a very small tour -- only 26 people, and a fantastic itinerary. Someone has cancelled out from going, and so there is a spot for a couple (two people of any sort who want to share a bed). You would not need to be a UNC alum (they charge some token amount to "count" you as an alum). Is anyone interested? If so, send me a direct email at [email protected] Information about the trip -- costs, itinerary, etc. -- can be found here: http://bit.ly/1N7OU1D

BDEhrman2015-03-23T21:23:27-04:00March 23rd, 2015|Public Forum|

About the Blog: Charities and Improvements

This post is about the blog itself, dealing with the question of which charities it supports (in reply to numerous requests) mentioning several of improvements we have made in response to requests that I have received. First, philanthropy. As I think everyone on the blog knows, all the member fees and all the donations (which you should feel free to begin or continue to make!) go to charity. I don’t keep a dime for myself and I pay for the upkeep, maintenance, and support for the blog (it’s not as cheap as one might imagine….) (or at least as I did) out of my own pocket. But I’m happy to do it – it’s a fantastic cause. Several people have pointed out to me that my *explanation* about the charity aspect of the blog on the Philanthropy page on is fairly pathetic. It doesn’t even indicate which charities the blog supports. That’s a problem. And so it’s time to rectify it. All the moneys collected by the blog go into the Bart Ehrman Foundation, and [...]

BDEhrman2017-12-09T11:00:50-05:00March 22nd, 2015|Public Forum|

Quickly on the Blog

This won't be full post, as I'm taking the day off. But I did want to thank everyone who responded to my question about how the blog was going. If you haven't responded yet, feel free to do so! I do want to hear from you. There were two comments that have recurred repeatedly that I want to deal with. Lots of people have expressed a wish that there was a search function for the blog. And, well, there is! If you'll go the upper right side of your screen on any post, you'll see a magnifying glass. Click that. You can search for anything you like. Others have said that they would like a topical catalogue of posts. There is a *rough* one that is indeed always available, as you'll see by going to the Member Landing Page or by clicking on Latest Posts. Topics are broad: Greco-Roman Religions; New Testament Gospels; Paul and Pauline Letters; etc. If you are interested in a different, more specific topic, just search for [...]

BDEhrman2015-03-15T16:05:42-04:00March 15th, 2015|Public Forum|

Taking the Temperature of the Blog

I would like to take a brief pause to take the temperature of the blog and to get some feedback from you about how you think it’s going. There are some general issues and one specific concern. If you’re not interested in responding to the general questions, please do skip to the end, to the specific concern, and weigh in with your opinion. FIRST, THE GENERAL ISSUES. The blog continues to grow and to raise significant money for charity – which, as you know, is its raison d’être. Of course I enjoy communicating information, knowledge, views, theories, opinions, and perspectives on early Christianity – from the historical Jesus to the writings of Paul to the early Gospels to the formation of the New Testament canon to the surviving manuscripts to the early Christian apocrypha to, well, to on and on and on. And for users of the blog, *this* is the ultimate point. I blog, you pay, we donate, and everyone’s happy. But that happiness is rooted in how well the communication is going. And [...]

BDEhrman2015-03-14T12:51:22-04:00March 14th, 2015|Public Forum|

My Debate with Dan Wallace: Is the Original NT Lost?

On February 1st, 2012 I had a public debate with Dan Wallace, professor of New Testament at Dallas Theological Seminary. The event was sponsored by The Ehrman Project, which, despite its name, is something I've never had anything to do with (I believe it is now defunct); it is/was an attempt by conservative Christians to debunk what I have written and taught (and thought, and thought about thinking). We held the event on my turf, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Memorial Hall Performing Arts Theater. It was a large and responsive crowd. As you might expect, I argue that even though we have thousands of manuscripts of the New Testament, we do not have many *early* ones -- and hardly any *really* early ones. That is why we can not (always? ever?) know with absolute certainty what the authors of the New Testament originally said. That matters for lots of reasons, one of which is that fundamentalist Christians but their faith in the very words of the Bible. [...]

BDEhrman2017-12-09T11:02:39-05:00March 7th, 2015|New Testament Manuscripts, Public Forum, Video Media|

On Debating a Fundamentalist

READER COMMENT: I just came across a post by Kyle Butt regarding your debate with him in 2014: http://www.apologeticspress.org/APContent.aspx?category=12&article=4844 He accuses you of “deception” and dishonesty. He says it is not credible that you spent much time writing books and going to debates, if it weren’t for the motive of convincing and persuading people that the Christian God doesn’t exist. He names you as someone who “has done as much or more than any single individual in modern times to destroy the Christian faith of literally thousands of people, young and old alike, across the globe.” RESPONSE: Wow. I didn’t know about Mr. Butt’s post. It is virtually beyond belief. If it weren’t so outrageously funny, I would find it completely outrageous. But look – maybe he doesn’t mean it seriously? I mean, his rhetoric certainly seems serious. But to say that I have “done as much or more than any single individual in modern times to destroy the Christian faith of literally thousands of people, young and old alike, across the globe” – [...]

BDEhrman2017-12-09T11:04:43-05:00February 21st, 2015|Bart's Critics, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

Debates For A Price

QUESTION: Robert M. Price posted on his FB wall a few weeks ago that he was considering starting a Kickstarter campaign to raise money to debate Ehrman. Looks like things might be going ahead? Ehrman said on 'The Skeptic Fence' podcast a few months back that he'd be OK with debating Price. Reading between the lines, it looks like that they may made some sort of verbal agreement? Dr. Ehrman, are you aware of this challenge?? RESPONSE: Ha! No, I’m afraid we haven’t made any kind of arrangement – Bob hasn’t said anything to me about this. But before pursuing the matter, I should probably provide a little bit of background and context. For those of you who don’t know, Robert Price is a mythicist, one of those small minority of human beings who does not think Jesus actually existed. In their opinion it is not simply that there are lots of myths and legends told about Jesus that are not historical; it is instead that the man himself never lived. This is a [...]

BDEhrman2017-12-09T11:06:17-05:00February 14th, 2015|Mythicism, Public Forum|

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