Reader’s Questions Archives - The Bart Ehrman Blog

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

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 [...]

BDEhrman2025-03-07T11:23:42-05:00March 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 [...]

BDEhrman2025-02-23T12:09:41-05:00March 1st, 2025|Reader’s Questions|

Some Intriguing Questions from Readers 2/2025
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Some Intriguing Questions from Readers 2/2025

Public Forum, 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 [...]

BDEhrman2025-02-10T12:58:02-05:00February 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 [...]

BDEhrman2025-01-03T22:44:22-05:00January 5th, 2025|Reader’s Questions|

Readers’ Questions and My Responses (11/2024)
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Readers’ Questions and My Responses (11/2024)

Reader’s Questions, Recent Comments

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 [...]

BDEhrman2024-11-29T08:36:13-05:00December 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 [...]

BDEhrman2024-11-15T16:36:18-05:00November 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* [...]

BDEhrman2024-09-26T13:36:41-04:00September 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, [...]

BDEhrman2024-09-16T12:35:08-04:00September 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 [...]

Diane2024-05-29T10:16:34-04:00June 5th, 2024|New Testament Manuscripts, Paul and His Letters, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

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

Paul and His Letters, Reader’s Questions

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 [...]

Diane2024-06-05T15:54:36-04:00June 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 [...]

Diane2024-05-29T10:11:57-04:00June 2nd, 2024|New Testament Manuscripts, Paul and His Letters, Reader’s Questions|

Is Matthew Duplicitous in His Reading of Scripture?
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Is Matthew Duplicitous in His Reading of Scripture?

Canonical Gospels, Reader’s Questions

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 [...]

BDEhrman2024-01-08T10:54:43-05:00January 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 [...]

BDEhrman2023-07-06T22:59:55-04:00July 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 [...]

BDEhrman2023-04-10T14:54:05-04:00April 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 [...]

BDEhrman2022-12-15T10:24:49-05:00December 20th, 2022|Paul and His Letters, Reader’s Questions|

How Can “Group Hallucinations” Possibly Happen?

When I lecture or debate on whether it is possible to "prove" the resurrection of Jesus on historical grounds, I talk about how -- whether you believe in the resurrection or not -- almost certainly the reason the disciples originally *believed* Jesus had been raised is that one or more of them had a vision of him after he died. (Believers would say their "vision" was something they actually saw; non-believers would say they were mistaken for one reason or another, or they imagined it, etc -- that it was a hallucination of some kind). But it is often noted that in the New Testament, after his death Jesus appears not only to individuals (Peter, Paul, and Mary, for example) (!) but to groups (the "twelve," the "apostles" and "500 people" at one time, according to 1 Cor. 15:5-8). But how could *that* be possible? One person might mistake something she saw for a person, or dream they saw someone, or whatever. But *groups* of people? How can historians possibly explain "group visions" of a [...]

BDEhrman2022-11-18T16:43:29-05:00November 13th, 2022|Historical Jesus, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

Can’t We Just Get Rid of Some of the Books of the Bible?

Here's an interesting question I received from a blog reader long ago! QUESTION: Given the criteria used to determine what would go on to constitute the New Testament canon, how is it that Hebrews and the book of Revelation remain part of the canon? I understand that Christians came to believe that they were authored by the apostles which is why they made it into the canon, but we now know that they weren't authored by Paul or John..so why are they still in the NT? RESPONSE: Interesting idea! I sometimes get asked what I would exclude from the canon if given the choice, and I almost always say 1 Timothy, because of what it says about women in 2:11-15, and how the passage has been used for such horrible purposes over the years. But, well, it ain’t gonna happen. I don’t get a vote. And that’s the problem with Hebrews and Revelation – and all the other books that were admitted when Church Fathers (wrongly) thought they were written by apostles of Jesus [...]

BDEhrman2022-10-28T14:39:53-04:00October 25th, 2022|Catholic Epistles, History of Christianity (100-300CE), Reader’s Questions|

Would I Be Personally Upset if the Mythicists Were Right (That Jesus Never Existed)?

Ever since I wrote my book Did Jesus Exist (where I argue that, well, yeah--whatever else you say about him, however much legend you think is in the Gospels, there certainly was a historical figure, Jesus), I have had people ask me if I have an axe to grind on this one or if it would be personally painful or professional ruinous to admit that the "mythicists" -- those who claim that Jesus is a *complete* myth (never existed) were right. I don’t address this in the book, and I think it is a terrific question! The reason I do is this. I think every historian of religion who makes a case for one thing or another needs to be queried: what is at stake for you in the matter? Did Jesus Exist, Historically? For example, I have participated a number of public debates with conservative evangelical Christian scholars who have wanted to insist that they can PROVE, historically, that Jesus was raised from the dead. Now I should state with vigor and emphasis – [...]

BDEhrman2022-10-21T12:42:15-04:00October 8th, 2022|Historical Jesus, Mythicism, Reader’s Questions|

Did King David Actually Exist?

I am starting to do research for my next online course, to be given in November, dealing with the Hebrew Bible. I'll be calling it "Finding Moses" and it will be dealing with four of the books of the Pentateuch (Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) and what we can actually know, historically, about the exodus from Egypt (Is there any archaeological evidence? Any reference to it in other texts outside the Bible? Any reason to think it did, or reasons to think it did not, happen?) and about the law of Moses (Were Jews legalistic? Did they have to keep the law for salvation? Why do some of the laws seem so strange today? Why do some people insist that some of the laws are still binding but others not? etc.). One book I'll be rereading in thinking through the various historical issues of the Pentateuch is Israel Finkelstein and Neal Asher Silberman’s, The Bible Unearthed. I remembered I had talked about the book on the blog long ago - it's not about Moses, but [...]

BDEhrman2022-09-23T10:23:06-04:00September 20th, 2022|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Reader’s Questions|

Do You Need the Holy Spirit to Interpret the Bible?

Every now and then I receive an email from a devout Christian who tells me that no one (including, well, me) is able to interpret the Bible correctly without guidance of the Holy Spirit. I take this view seriously, but I've never found it convincing. Well, OK, I did when I was a student at Moody Bible Institute in the mid 70s; but not for much longer than that afterward. Today, of course, I don't believe the Holy Spirit can guide one in reading the Bible since, as an agnostic, I don’t believe in the Holy Spirit at all (since I don’t believe in God). But even when I did believe in the Holy Spirit (after Moody), I came to think that it made no sense to claim that a person needed divine guidance through the Spirit to interpret the Bible correctly. This was for two main reasons, both of which -- when they occurred to me -- struck me as virtually irrefutable. The first is this: if it is true that Are you interested [...]

BDEhrman2022-09-01T11:10:47-04:00September 7th, 2022|Reader’s Questions, Reflections and Ruminations|

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