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Bart responds to readers, friend and foe, as time allows.

Interesting Questions from Readers (5/27/2025)

Here are some particularly sticky questions I've gotten recently, with expanded answers to share with all of you:   QUESTION: Bart, what should we understand by “exousia” in I Cor 11.10?   RESPONSE: Ah, right. A woman is to have an "authority" (exousia) on her head. It’s a confusing verse in a confusing passage.  The verse: For this reason a woman ought to have authority over her head, because of the angels.  It's sometimes translated "veil" though it clearly does not mean veil, per se. But in the context Paul is talking about why women should wear head coverings in church and so in some sense apparently the veil is seen as an “exousia” or “authority.”  His opening explanation is that since God is the “head” of Christ and Christ is the head of a man then the man is the head of a woman.  Does “head” here not refer to the thing sitting on your shoulders but something like “chief authority” (as in “the head of the department”)? Exousia itself means [...]

2025-06-03T09:22:49-04:00June 5th, 2025|Reader’s Questions|

Interesting Questions from Readers

Here are three interesting questions I've recently received, and my attempts to answer....   QUESTION: I’ve been wondering about the passage in Romans where Paul expresses his fear about returning to Jerusalem on account of opposition because he wanted to take the money that he raised there before leaving for Spain. I used to couple this account with Paul’s final leg of his third mission out of Corinth back to Jerusalem, and there he indeed faces opposition Acts chapter 20 and then finds himself in Rome, in prison Acts 28? The passages seem to fit well together, but how? History, hearsay, looking at the letter itself expanding the details? What do you think? RESPONSE: I think the big problem is the whether we can accept the book of Acts as providing a reliable account of Paul's arrest and trials.  I don’t think we can.  So reconciling it or conflating it with Paul’s own account(s) just doesn’t work. In Acts, the arrest itself is meant to show that Paul has never done anything contrary [...]

2025-05-25T20:01:18-04:00May 29th, 2025|Reader’s Questions|

Some Interesting Questions of the Week

I've started posting questions and responses from readers.  Here's another set of particularly good ones.   QUESTION: I recently read your book Jesus Interrupted and have become interested in your work. In it you discussed the potential forgeries contained in the Pauline letters and New Testament but it didn’t seem to mention much about the Old Testament. I noticed you did say that the New Testament was your specialty but was wondering if there was any evidence you were aware of that the Old Testament contains similar situations and which books. RESPONSE: Yes, my book was just about the NT, not the entire Bible.  Most of the books of the OT are either anonymous (Genesis through 2 Kings, e.g.) or written in the authors’ actual names (most of the prophets starting with Isaiah).  Others are attributed to a person who didn't write them.  Proverbs, for example, does not claim to be by Solomon.  In cases like this, since the author himself doesn't claim to be the person to whom the book is later [...]

2025-05-19T11:06:32-04:00May 21st, 2025|Reader’s Questions|

Some Important Questions From Blog Readers

Here are some questions I have received recently from readers: QUESTION: I’m curious about when Paul’s letter were compiled and by whom? It seems almost miraculous that, in that time period, letters sent to various destinations around the Mediterranean could somehow be gathered up together in one place. What are the earliest fragments or complete copies we have?   RESPONSE: It's an unusually complicated issue, and it has vexed scholars for a very long time.  But there is nothing miraculous about it per se. The letters of Ignatius (somewhat weirdly, we have seven of those too), were also collected at some point, and they too were sent to a wide range of places.  But how it happened (in either case) is the tricky question. With respect to Paul, we already a references to his letters in 2 Peter 3:16, where the anonymous author (without telling us which ones he knows) calls them Scripture! And Ignatius himself, (around 110) mentions Paul’s letters. Our earliest relatively full manuscript of the letters (called P45) comes from [...]

2025-04-29T09:55:26-04:00May 6th, 2025|Paul and His Letters, Reader’s Questions|

Two Fundamental Questions: How Do You Date a Manuscript and How Do you Know the Meaning of a Word?

Among the  interesting questions I've received recently from blog readers, two strike me as especially key for understanding how scholars make the claims they do; one of the questions challenges whether I have grounds to make one of the claims I do!  Good questions.  Some grounds (say, of coffee) are better than others.  Here are the questions and my responses. ****************************** QUESTION What is the process to assign a year to a text? For example, when you say that the earliest text of Matthew that we  still have comes from 375 CE where do you get that date? Do the authors of the texts write the year? Thanks! RESPONSE: I don’t think you are asking when the text of Matthew itself was written (which was 80=85 or so) but when this particular manuscript (the earliest one that contains Matthew) was produced.  And so that’s what I will answer. There is a discipline called palaeography (literally "ancient writing) that dates manuscripts, mainly on the basis of handwriting analysis.  Since everything in antiquity was [...]

Dating Manuscripts and Understanding Mark: Readers’ Questions

How much historical information about Jesus does the Gospel of Mark present?  How do you date an ancient manuscript?  Why does Mark have a "messianic secret"? These are among the very good questions I've received recently, and here is how I've tried to answer them succinctly. ****************************** QUESTION: How much of the historical Jesus does Mark capture, either purposefully or accidentally? RESPONSE: Well, it's impossible to put a percentage on it.  For one thing, if it’s correct that Jesus' lived for, say, 30-33 years (who knows?), it’s worth noting that Mark's Gospel takes roughly two hours to read/recite.  Necessarily he would have captured only a tiny fraction of the historical Jesus' life, even if he is 100% accurate. He's clearly not 100% accurate, so the question for most historical scholars is not how much of his life does he capture but how accurate is the information that he does give. That's impossible to quantify definitively, in no small measure be because different scholars would give different responses (though none of them in a percentage!). What [...]

2025-03-07T11:23:42-05:00March 11th, 2025|Canonical Gospels, Reader’s Questions|

More Interesting Questions from Blog Readers

The intriguing questions keep coming.  Here are some more that I've received.  And BTW, if you're not a Gold Member on the blog you might consider moving up to that level: one of the perks is that I do a live Q&A every month with Gold Members, which is recorded and then distributed to them.  It's a terrifically fun event and I get very good questions to address. But for now, here's some that I've addressed in writing: QUESTION This question is about the understanding of atonement across the gospels. Specifically why do Matthew and John think Jesus specifically HAD to die, in your view? Especially Matthew since he is the one I struggle with most. Luke famously doesn’t have atonement and thinks he had to die to bring people to repentance. I think Mark is a Pauline Gospel so it has his theology of Jesus death being a ransom for gentiles in mind. Matthew and John are the ones that I struggle with most, though. I think John says that it is meant to [...]

2025-02-23T12:09:41-05:00March 1st, 2025|Reader’s Questions|

Some Intriguing Questions from Readers 2/2025

Here are some interesting readers’ questions I’ve received that I think would be of some interest to other blog members, along with my answers which may or may not be of interest!   QUESTION I often find that historians of early Christianity use the terms “historical Jesus/Paul/whoever” and “real Jesus/Paul/whoever” somewhat interchangeably, which I don’t love. I think there’s a difference between the historical Abraham Lincoln, who is an artificial human construct arrived at by following the rules of historical scholarship, and the real Abraham Lincoln, who is someone we have no access to. Perhaps I’m being too post-modernist though. Perhaps somewhat analogous are Proto-Indo-European, an artificial human reconstructed language obtained by following the rules of historical linguistics to the best of our ability, and whatever was truly spoken by any particular speaker in the Pontic-Caspian steppe in, say, 6000 BCE. Or, as a looser analogy, Biblical religion as it existed in its ideal form in the mind of the priestly redactors of the Tanakh, and Israelite-Judean religion that any particular person in say 600 [...]

2025-02-10T12:58:02-05:00February 18th, 2025|Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

Was There No Room in the “Inn” or in the “Guestroom”? And Doesn’t Caesar Augustus Himself Describe His Census? More Questions from Readers

Here are some more particularly interesting and significant questions I've received from readers, with answers for all here to check out.   QUESTION: Dr. Ehrman: I find it interesting how the understanding of the Greek translation might affect such a crucial NT story. Also, it is in Luke’s narrative that we get the “no room in the inn” comment. I have read one commentary that the Greek original literal translation is more like “the travelers shelter was not for them”. Do you have any thoughts on the Greek original of Luke 2:7? RESPONSE: It's a tricky Greek word (KATALUMA) that could mean either "inn" or "guestroom."  It is found in only two other places in the NT, Mark 14:14/Luke 22:11 (Luke has copied Mark's verse verbatim) where Jesus is clearly referring to a room, not an inn.  In Luke 2:7, though, the context appears to suggest "a place where travelers stayed" rather than "a particular room in a house" since, having not found a “place” to stay in it (the KATALUMA) they [...]

2025-01-03T22:44:22-05:00January 5th, 2025|Reader’s Questions|

Readers’ Questions and My Responses (11/2024)

I have received some more interesting questions in the comment section of the blog, and thought I should published them more broadly, along with my responses.  Here goes!   Question: What are your views on what Jesus is communicating in the ‘Whose Son Is the Messiah?’ story in the synoptics where Jesus references Psalm 110:1.   Response: It’s a great passage (Mark 12:35-37). It occurs in the midst of a series of dialogues/controversies Jesus is having with his Jewish opponents in Jerusalem, in which Jesus repeatedly confounds and maligns them. In this one he does so by asking them a question that he knows they won’t be able to answer without contradicting something they already think. He asks them how “the Christ can be the son of David if in Psalm 110, written by David, he says “The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand….”?? That is, if David calls the messiah “My Lord,” then how could he be his “son”? The scribes are apparently flummoxed and can’t answer, and the crowds [...]

2024-11-29T08:36:13-05:00December 3rd, 2024|Reader’s Questions, Recent Comments|

Intriguing Questions and Attempted Answers!

Here are a couple of the tricky and interesting questions I have received lately on the blog, along with my answers to them.  They seem important enough to me to share more broadly for everyone’s benefit.  As you’ll see, they cover a range of topics.   ****************************** QUESTION: I was wondering if in Paul’s letters themselves, if there is any concept of Jesus worship like we see in the gospels? Many examples including the word proskuneo (προσκυνέω) where it is argued Jesus is being worshiped in the New Testament; are these present in Paul’s letters?   MY RESPONSE: PROSKUNEO is a tricky word in Greek. It is a compound verb formed of KUNEO, which means to “kiss”, and PROS which means “before” and is generally used in the sense of falling down in reverence before someone and/or to show humility in their presence (by kissing their feet?). It is indeed often translated “worship” because it is the sort of thing one does before a god, or in the Xn tradition before God or [...]

2024-11-15T16:36:18-05:00November 21st, 2024|Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

Some Interesting Random Questions

I’ve recently answered some queries from readers and thought that the questions were too good not to post for all to see.   They are all on different topics, but interesting ones, and they required different lengths of answer.  Here they are, four of them, a blog Q&A.   Question One: I am writing a blog about how Christians defend biblical inerrancy and I came across an on-line article with this quote. “You have searched the Scriptures, which are true and given by the Holy Spirit. You know that nothing unrighteous or counterfeit is written in them.” —Clement of Rome, letter to the Corinthians, first century Two questions: Was there really a Pope in the first century? What kind of “scripture” could he possibly be referring to in the last decade of the first century?   My Response: This article is giving a passage found in 1 Clement 45.2.  1 Clement is a letter from around 95 CE or so, written by the Christians in Rome to the Christians in Corinth; presumably *someone* [...]

2024-09-26T13:36:41-04:00September 28th, 2024|Reader’s Questions|

Can We Get Rid of Our Presuppositions?

Here's a set of questions I get asked a lot, expressed here with particular clarity by someone on the blog a while back. QUESTION: What are presuppositions? Why do we all have them? And how do we make sure we have the right ones, or at least good ones. Having come out of Fundamentalist circles I heard so much about “presuppositions”, “worldviews”, “presuppositional apologetics” and so on.  Seems the argument goes “Well, we all have presuppositions. No one is free of them. Therefore it is just as valid to come to historical and scientific issues with the presupposition that the claims are all true. Just as unbelievers come to the evidence with the presuppositions that there are no such things as miracles.” And this is my... RESPONSE: This is a huge question (and a very important one), and requires a long answer.  I can’t answer it any better than I already tried to do in my book How Jesus Became God.  This is what I say there, in response to a particular issue, [...]

2024-09-16T12:35:08-04:00September 19th, 2024|Reader’s Questions, Reflections and Ruminations|

Is There Even Such a Thing as the “Original” Text of Philippians?

  What would it even *mean* to say that we have an "original" letter of Paul to the Philippians? In my previous two posts I began answering a series of questions asked by a reader about how we got Paul’s letter to the Philippians.  In my previous post I explained why some critical scholars maintain that the letter was originally two separate letters that have been spliced together.  That obviously makes the next question the reader asked a bit more complicated than one might otherwise imagine.  And it’s not the only complication.   Here is the reader’s next question: QUESTION:  Do you agree that the first copy of the letter written by Paul to the Philippians was also an original?  RESPONSE:  First off, my initial reaction that I gave a couple of posts ago still holds.  I’m not exactly sure what the reader is asking.  If he’s asking whether a copy of the original letter to Philippians is itself an original of Philippians, then the answer is no.  It is not the original.  It is a [...]

Is Paul’s Letter to the Philippians Actually Two Letters Cut and Spliced Together?

Could Paul's moving and powerful letter to the Philippians actually be *two* letters that were later cut and spliced together? In my previous post I answered, in short order, a series of questions that a reader had about the “original” text of Paul’s letter to the Philippians.  I will now take several posts in order to address some of the questions at greater length.  Here was the first one:   QUESTION:  Would you agree that the letter written to the Philippians was an original writing of Paul? The short answer is Yes – it is one of the undisputed Pauline letters.  The longer answer is, well, complicated.  Scholars have long adduced reasons for thinking that this letter of Paul was originally *two* letters (or parts of two letters) that were later spliced together into the one letter we have today.  I explain the reasons for thinking so in my textbook, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings.  Here is what I say there.  (If you want to follow the argument particularly [...]

2024-06-05T15:54:36-04:00June 4th, 2024|Paul and His Letters, Reader’s Questions|

Do We Have the Original Text of Philippians?

  I have been discussing whether we have the "original" text of Paul's letters, and have argued that 2 Corinthians in fact is probably two and maybe (my view) as many as five letters spliced together.  It's not the only letter of Paul's that we may not have an "original" version of (assuming that the earlier letters that were cut and then spliced together are more original).  We have a similar problem with Philippians, long my favorite Pauline letter -- so much my favorite as a young person that I memorized it at age 18!  But since then I have seen there are some problems that it presents.  I addressed these long ago on the blog in response to a question. The question, as you'll see, is simply about whether Philippians was original to Paul.  But it got me off on to a range of issues all closely related, over a series of posts.  Here's the first, with the question. QUESTION(S):  Would you agree that the letter written to the Philippians was an original writing [...]

Is Matthew Duplicitous in His Reading of Scripture?

In a month or so I'm going to be producing a new online course (not connected with the blog) on The Genius of Matthew: What Scholars Say about the First Gospel.  I'm not sure if that's the actual title we'll be giving it, but it's what's in my head just now. (If you're interested in my courses, go to http://www.bartehrman.com/courses/ . You won't find this one there just now because we haven't announced it yet.) It will be an eight-lecture course dealing with what I think are the most important aspects of Matthew's Gospel -- what it's all about, what its leading themes/ideas/views are, how the author changed Mark's account significantly to get his point across, how Matthew (in a striking way) insists Jesus fulfilled Scripture, whether Matthew urges his followers to keep the Jewish law strictly (instead of abandoning it), whether, even so, the Gospel can be seen as anti-Jewish.  I'll be looking at some depth at the Sermon on the Mount (widely misunderstood) and a number of the key parables.  And I'll be [...]

2024-01-08T10:54:43-05:00January 9th, 2024|Canonical Gospels, Reader’s Questions|

Questions about Dating the Gospels

How do we know when the Gospels were written?  I have recently received two questions about this matter on the blog (from two different people, within minutes of each other!); I answered the questions as usual in the Comment section, but thought the issues were important enough to present as a post as well, both the questions/comments and my responses (which I’ve expanded a bit here). ******************************   QUESTION:  With all this discussion of the early non-canonical gospels, I need some clarification. By reading multiple scholars, I think I am confused. As far as the canonical gospels, I had thought that the earliest copies were from the late second and early third century. By copies I mean those that are recognizable as Mark, Matthew, Luke and John. I thought that scholars had dated them by indirect means to the last quarter of the first century. How are the canonical gospels dated in this manner as most scholars claim? Do they have fragments with carbon dates from first century CE? Are there references by independent sources [...]

2023-07-06T22:59:55-04:00July 13th, 2023|Canonical Gospels, Reader’s Questions|

Gold Q&A LIVE! (And Recorded) Tuesday April 11

Dear Gold Members, I will be recording  my Gold Q&A tomorrow afternoon,  April 11, 2:00 pm.  If you're free and want to watch it, come along!  I've got a full set of questions to deal with and am looking forward to it. No charge for admission, just show up.  We'll meet and greet, I'll do my thing, and then we can chat for a few minutes after. Here's the link: https://unc.zoom.us/j/92207490998?pwd=MXRhQW9GTlRaMmE1WXdvRHVEVlNRQT09   Meeting ID: 922 0749 0998 Passcode: 339508 One tap mobile +16469313860,,92207490998# US +19294362866,,92207490998# US (New York) Dial by your location +1 646 931 3860 US +1 929 436 2866 US (New York) +1 301 715 8592 US (Washington DC) +1 305 224 1968 US +1 309 205 3325 US +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago) +1 386 347 5053 US +1 507 473 4847 US +1 564 217 2000 US +1 669 444 9171 US +1 669 900 6833 US (San Jose) +1 689 278 1000 US +1 719 359 4580 US +1 253 205 0468 US +1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma) +1 [...]

2023-04-10T14:54:05-04:00April 10th, 2023|Reader’s Questions, Reflections and Ruminations|

Did Jesus Appear to 500 People After His Resurrection?

What do we make of Paul's claim that 500 people at one time saw Jesus after the resurrection (in 1 Corinthians 15:3-5)?   I get this question every now and then -- maybe five or six times just this year.  These days, among other things, I point 0ut something I hadn't thought about in most of the years of my existence, that there was almost certainly no Christian group (meaning: a group of people who believed Jesus was raised from the dead) of that size in Paul's day anywhere in the world!  (I discuss the numbers of Christians at different time periods in antiquity in my book The Triumph of Christianity.)  So on that level alone it seems highly implausible. But jut now looking through old posts from many years ago, I see I was asked the question and dealt with it in a different way.  I'd forgotten all about it, but see now that I give a bit of analysis that tries to unpack Paul's claims.  Here's the Q and the A: ****************************** QUESTION on [...]

2022-12-15T10:24:49-05:00December 20th, 2022|Paul and His Letters, Reader’s Questions|
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