Reader’s Questions Archives - Page 27 of 28 - The Bart Ehrman Blog

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

Autobiographical. Metzger and Me: Finishing the Dissertation

SOME MORE ON MY RELATIONSHIP WITH BRUCE METZGER, ON FINISHING THE DISSERTATION Different dissertation advisors have different approaches to supervising a dissertation. Some are extremely hands on, to the point of working over every thought and every sentence. Not too many are like that, because if they were, they would never do anything else with their life. Plus, the idea is for the student to figure it out and get good at it. That takes some trial and error. Other advisors go for the big picture and like to talk over the big ideas. Others basically don’t give a rip how the dissertation is coming along – they want to see it at the end, and when it’s done, they’ll tell the student whether it’s good enough or not. Others … well, there are lots of other approaches. Sometime I’ll explain mine, which is not quite any of the above. Metzger took an approach that other students may have found frustrating, but that was absolutely perfect for me. He basically let me do my own [...]

BDEhrman2020-12-29T00:56:04-05:00August 14th, 2012|Bart’s Biography, Book Discussions, Reader’s Questions|

Autobiographical. Me and Metzger: More on the Dissertation

THIS IS A CONTINUATION OF MY POSTS OF MY RELATIONSHIP WITH BRUCE METZGER, MY MENTOR As I started thinking about how to write up this second post on my dissertation (the first post was posted some days ago), I remembered one of my clearest pieces of advice that I ever gave to myself, many years ago now, based, already then, on substantial experience. Never , ever, NEVER ask a graduate student what s/he is writing the dissertation on. They invariably will tell you, and it will take a half hour, and your eyes will glaze over in 30 seconds. So just don’t do it. With that principle in mind, I think I had better not go into all the ins and outs of the dissertation. I’ll just go into some of them…. FOR THE REST OF THIS POST, LOG IN AS A MEMBER. If you don't belong yet, now's your chance! The reason it is so painful listening to someone’s story about their dissertation is that by their very nature dissertations tend to [...]

BDEhrman2020-05-11T13:52:14-04:00August 12th, 2012|Bart’s Biography, Reader’s Questions|

Autobiographical. Metzger and Me: The Dissertation

THIS POST RESUMES MY RECOLLECTIONS OF MY INTERACTIONS WITH BRUCE METZGER, MY MENTOR. When I entered my PhD program at Princeton Theological Seminary, I knew already that I wanted to specialize in the study of the Greek manuscript tradition of the New Testament. As I indicated in my earlier posts, that’s why I went there, because Metzger was the country’s leading expert in this field, and one could argue the leading expert in the world (some Germans would contest the point!). While doing my Master’s thesis for Metzger I read widely in the secondary literature on textual criticism, and came to be highly influenced by a scholar named Gordon Fee. Fee is an interesting and important figure. As it turns out, he is a very committed Pentecostal Christian, who preaches and evangelizes. But when he’s not doing that, he’s doing scholarship, and he’s an amazing scholar. He is also the author of How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth and Discovering Biblical Equality, among other works. At the time of my master’s work, [...]

BDEhrman2020-12-29T01:04:50-05:00August 8th, 2012|Bart’s Biography, Reader’s Questions|

Silvanus as Peter’s Secretary?

QUESTION: What do you make of the author's reference to a Silvanus in 1 Peter 5:12? Could it be that this really is Peter saying he used a secretary to write this letter? I know you said there is little to no evidence that people used secretaries, but what do you make of this reference to a Silvanus? RESPONSE: Yes, this is a question that I deal with in my book Forged, and that I deal with at yet greater length in the book coming out in the fall, Forgery and Counterforgery. Several points are important to make about the question, but first a bit of background. FOR THE REST OF THIS POST, log in as a Member. Click here for membership options. If you don't belong yet, JOIN!! Background. Scholars have long noted that the book of 1 Peter is written in elegant Greek, and that it seems highly unlikely that an Aramaic-speaking fisherman of the lower classes (which Peter must have been), who is called “unlettered” (literally, “illiterate”) in Acts 4:13, [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T19:30:22-04:00July 28th, 2012|Catholic Epistles, Reader’s Questions|

Autobiographical. Metzger and Me: My PhD Exams

I CONTINUE MY RECOLLECTIONS OF MY EXPERIENCES WITH MY MENTOR, BRUCE METZGER: Metzger directed my PhD exams, and was responsible for writing the questions for one of them. To explain that situation requires a good bit of background. In a typical PhD program, at the end of two years of taking seminars (usually three a semester, for four semesters), a student takes the PhD exams. These go by different names: “Comprehensive exams” (that’s what we called them at Princeton Seminary); “Preliminary Exams” (i.e. preliminary to writing a dissertation); “Qualifying exams” (i.e. that qualify you to move on to the dissertation stage) – all of these refer to the same battery of exams. In most respects the way it was set up at Princeton was fairly typical – it is the way we also have it set up in the PhD program that I teach in at UNC. Here at UNC, students take five examinations, each of them four hours in length, followed by a two-hour oral examination before the examining committee. At Princeton we took [...]

BDEhrman2020-05-11T13:47:39-04:00July 26th, 2012|Bart’s Biography, Reader’s Questions, Teaching Christianity|

Paul in Acts: Part 3

I mentioned in my previous posts that there are discrepancies between Paul’s letters and the book of Acts in both major and minor ways, and in my last post I dealt with some differences that appear when one looks closely at the details (the issue I addressed: what does Paul do immediately upon his conversion). There are many instances like that throughout Acts: if you compare what Paul has to say with what Acts has to say, on the same topic or about the same event, you will find differences, and often these differences matter a lot to the overall narrative. There are also of differences that emerge from the overall portrayal of Paul and his Christian mission. In this post I’ll deal with one example, and in a future post with one other. For this Post: Paul and the Other Apostles. One big area of interest is Paul’s relationship with those were apostles before him. This consists principally of the former disciples of Jesus (Peter, John, etc.) and Jesus’ own brother James, who was [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-17T13:35:16-04:00July 24th, 2012|Acts of the Apostles, Paul and His Letters, Reader’s Questions|

Autobiographical. Metzger and Me: The Squirrel Story, Part 2

HERE I CONTINUE MY REMINISCENCES OF BRUCE METZGER, MY MENTOR As I indicated on my previous post, for years friends of mine were eager for me to find out whether the story about Metzger and the squirrel really happened. They wanted me just to ask Metzger. But there were problems with that. Among other things, if it had happened, he almost certainly wouldn’t remember, since it would have simply been something that happened with no significance to him – only to the one who thought it was very odd that Metzger would happen to know what the Greek word for squirrel was and that he would volunteer it at that rather inauspicious moment. Moreover, there were aspects of the story that did not “ring true.” Metzger was not heartless toward other living beings and he was not one to boast about his knowledge about Greek -- or about anything else. Years later something happened to me that made me realize that the narrative itself could not be true... FOR THE REST OF THIS POST, log [...]

BDEhrman2020-05-11T13:30:32-04:00July 23rd, 2012|Bart’s Biography, Historical Jesus, Reader’s Questions, Reflections and Ruminations|

Paul in Acts: Part 2

My post on the portrayal of Paul in Acts generated a considerable response, so I thought maybe I should say a few more words about this issue in another post – or in a series of posts, if need be. Some responses have suggested that maybe “Luke” (we don’t know the author’s real name, so we may as well call him this) had sources of information available to him for the book of Acts, just as he clearly did for the Gospel (e.g., the Gospels of Mark and Q). I think this is absolutely right, he almost certainly did have sources. Otherwise he would have had to make everything up himself, and I don’t think there’s any way that happened. There are too many close parallels to what Paul has to say about himself -- even though on closer look, in almost all these parallels there are striking discrepancies; so Luke had sources, but the sources were not completely reliable; and he altered them as he saw fit. FOR THE REST OF THIS POST, log [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-16T13:05:33-04:00July 22nd, 2012|Acts of the Apostles, Paul and His Letters, Reader’s Questions|

Autobiographical. Metzger and Me: The Squirrel Story

I CONTINUE MY POSTS ON MY MENTOR BRUCE METZGER As with all great men, Metzger was widely talked about among those who knew and revered him. There were lots of stories told about Metzger at Princeton Seminary. Someone should probably collect and publish them. I was especially interested in the stories, since I came to Princeton in order to study with him. Most of the stories were meant to be funny, and we always wondered which, if any of them, were “true” (in the sense that they really happened). Far and away the most commonly told and best known story was the one I heard when I first arrived at the seminary in 1978. It is the story of Metzger and the Squirrel. FOR THE REST OF THIS POST, log in as a Member. Click here for membership options. If you don't belong yet, JOIN!! Before telling the story and explicating it a bit, I need to stress that it is hard to convey the story in writing. It really has to be told, [...]

BDEhrman2020-05-11T13:33:11-04:00July 21st, 2012|Bart’s Biography, Reader’s Questions, Reflections and Ruminations|

Paul the Persecutor and the Historical Jesus

QUESTION: You mention in your book "Did Jesus Exist?" that Paul started his persecution of Christians in the early 30s. If he was tasked with hunting down Christians by the Sanhedrin he must have had a fairly high position among the Sanhedrin (I don't mean that he was a member). How come he didn't witness the crucifixion or why didn’t he in some way have firsthand knowledge of the events in immediate connection with the crucifixion? RESPONSE: Ah, an interesting question. So, it’s part of a much, much larger issue. Let me explain. We have two sources of information about the life of Paul: his own letters and the book of Acts. There are lots of reasons for thinking that the book of Acts is not always reliable when it comes to describing events in Paul’s life. I may devote an entire post – or maybe even a series of posts – to the question. For now, suffice it to say that whenever you can compare what Paul has to say about his own [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-17T13:22:45-04:00July 20th, 2012|Acts of the Apostles, Historical Jesus, Paul and His Letters, Reader’s Questions|

Autobiographical. Metzger and Me: Metzger’s Faith

THIS POST CONTINUES MY RECOLLECTIONS OF MY MENTOR BRUCE METZGER. Several times in these posts on Bruce Metzger I have mentioned the fact that many of his colleagues at Princeton Theological Seminar considered him “old school,” and theologically a bit, well, naïve. It is common in theological circles to brand someone who has an older view of things that is not cutting edge as naïve. And Metzger certainly was not cutting edge when it came to theology. Metzger had been raised in a pious home in Pennsylvania and the piety and simple beliefs of his youth stayed with him through old age. As I’ve indicated, he knew billions of facts about the Bible – its teachings, its historical context, the formation of the canon, the transmission of its text, the translation of its text into ancient languages (Latin, Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, Georgian, Slavonic -- and so on!), the history of its interpretation, etc. etc. But his own personal beliefs could well have been the same had he not known these billions of facts. His was [...]

BDEhrman2020-05-11T13:25:11-04:00July 19th, 2012|Bart’s Biography, Reader’s Questions, Reflections and Ruminations|

Some Questions on the Greek

I'M FIRMLY ENSCONCED IN LONDON NOW (JUST SAW A BRILLIANT "WINTER'S TALE" WITH SARAH, MY SHAKESPEARE SCHOLAR WIFE WHO IS TEACHING A DUKE IN LONDON THEATER PROGRAM THIS SUMMER). I'M SERIOUSLY JET-LAGGED, BUT NOT SO JET-LAGGED AS TO AVOID MY BELOVED BLOG! HERE'S ONE I'VE BEEN SAVING UP FOR A RAINY DAY. IN LONDON, IT'S *ALWAYS* A RAINY DAY..... QUESTION: I am curious as to what role paleography has had in dating various manuscripts from early Christian writings. As I am aware, the canonical scriptures of the New Testament were written in Koine Greek. Were there any writing style changes over the period of the composition of these works or subtle changes in the Koine dialect to assign them into known date ranges? Can scribal copies be detected this way or were most or all copied true to the original? Lastly are you aware of other languages used to compose original, non-canonical works from the earliest Christian writings? RESPONSE: There are actually four questions here, although that may not be obvious. I’ll answer them [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T19:32:53-04:00July 18th, 2012|History of Biblical Scholarship, New Testament Manuscripts, Reader’s Questions|

Autobiographical. Metzger and Me: Serving as his Teaching Assistant

THIS IS A CONTINUATION OF MY RECOLLECTIONS OF MY TIME WITH BRUCE METZGER, MY MENTOR AT PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY FOR SEVEN YEARS (BOTH MY MASTERS AND PH.D. DEGREES) In addition to studying with Bruce Metzger for seven years, four of them as his PhD student, I also served as his teaching assistant on a number of occasions. Teaching assistants normally help with the teaching of a large lecture course. Sometimes that means meeting with groups of students regularly – once a week – for a discussions section dealing with aspects of the course. And always it means helping with the grading, or – even more commonly – doing all the grading! The professor then lectures, gives assignments, directs the course – and the T.A. (= teaching assistant) does all the grunt work. It’s part of the training. Metzger tended to have large courses for the MDiv students (Masters of Divinity is the basic degree for training to become a minister; MDiv students already have a college degree) – because so many of the students revered [...]

BDEhrman2020-05-11T13:42:38-04:00July 15th, 2012|Bart’s Biography, Reader’s Questions, Reflections and Ruminations, Teaching Christianity|

Autobiographical. Metzger and Me: My Dissertation Proposal

THIS IS A CONTINUATION OF MY REFLECTIONS ON MY RELATIONSHIP WITH BRUCE METZGER, MY MENTOR. SEVERAL PEOPLE HAVE ASKED WHAT HIS VIEW WAS OF MY LEAVING THE FAITH. I'LL DEAL WITH THAT DOWN THE LINE. (AS IT TURNS OUT, IT'S VIRTUALLY A NON-EXISTENT PART OF THE STORY....) In graduate school different professors have different approaches to evaluating and grading term papers. Some professors are completely anal about it and insist on correcting every mistake, rewriting every sentence, and reformulating every idea. Not many are that way, thankfully, since doing all this takes an enormous chunk of time (and a very large ego). I never had a professor like that, but I have known some over the years. Others make extremely judicious and helpful comments, sometimes at great length. My teacher Paul Meyer was like that at Princeton Seminary. The comments he made on our papers were in depth, always on target, and superior in quality to any of the scholarship we read all semester in the class. Meyer never published much himself – he threw [...]

BDEhrman2020-05-11T13:47:58-04:00July 13th, 2012|Bart’s Biography, Reader’s Questions, Reflections and Ruminations|

Autobiographical: Metzger and Me. The Seminar on the Canon

THIS RETURNS TO MY SERIES OF POSTS ON MY RELATIONSHIP WITH MY MENTOR BRUCE METZGER. EVENTUALLY, MANY POSTS FROM NOW, I'LL GET BACK TO THE ORIGINAL QUESTION: WHAT HE THOUGHT OF MY MOVE AWAY FROM THE FAITH. THAT'S WAY DOWN THE LINE. I return to the early years of my relationship with Bruce Metzger. That graduate seminar that I took with him, my first semester in my PhD program, was exhilarating, and in some senses life changing. To be sure, most of the work we did for the seminar was difficult and detailed. Every week we had to translate from Greek or Latin an ancient “canon list” – that is, a list of books that this or that author thought should be considered canonical scripture – lists and discussions of canon from Origen, Eusebius, Codex Claramontanus, Athanasius, and so on. One of the students in the course, as it turns out, was a Greek orthodox priest studying for a PhD. He obviously knew Greek extremely well, better than any of us (except, of course, Metzger). [...]

BDEhrman2020-05-11T13:45:18-04:00July 11th, 2012|Bart’s Biography, History of Christianity (100-300CE), Reader’s Questions, Reflections and Ruminations|

Autobiographical. Metzger and Me: Beginning the PhD Program

HIS IS A CONTINUATION OF MY POSTS ON MY RELATIONSHIP WITH BRUCE METZGER, MY MENTOR. When I entered the PhD program at Princeton Theological Seminary, my relationship with Bruce Metzger deepened significantly. At the time, the New Testament program at PTS was one of the best in the country. The faculty teaching the PhD students were all brilliant scholars; all of them except Metzger were principally known for their work in exegesis (the interpretation of the New Testament) and biblical theology (trying to explain the meaning and significance of the text for the individual Christian and the life of the church). None of them, apart from Metzger, was widely published and known outside of scholarly circles; but within scholarly circles they had a very high profile indeed. My main professors in the program were, in addition to Metzger, Chris Beker (a somewhat wild but truly genius interpreter of the writings of Paul), Paul Meyer (one of the deepest readers of texts I’ve ever known), and David Adams (a junior faculty person who had a brilliantly [...]

BDEhrman2020-05-11T13:33:54-04:00July 10th, 2012|Bart’s Biography, Reader’s Questions, Reflections and Ruminations|

Autobiographical: Metzger and Me. My First Work on the Text

QUESTION: Hey Bart, I know you studied under Bruce Metzger and my question is how did he feel about your skepticism toward the trustworthiness of the N.T? RESPONSE: Bruce Metzger and I had a long and very close relationship. I was his student for seven years and his research assistant for the New Revised Standard Version (he was the chair of the translation committee) for a couple of years. He directed my masters and PhD theses; he helped me break into publishing; he worked to get me into editorial positions for journals and monograph series; he guided my research until I struck out on my own. I dare say I was closer to him than any student that he had in his four decades of teaching at Princeton Theological Seminary. He became a kind of father figure for me. He was a great New Testament scholar and a great man. I first heard of Bruce Metzger when I was in college studying Greek. My Greek professor at Wheaton, Gerald Hawthorne, knew that I was [...]

BDEhrman2020-05-11T13:41:51-04:00July 8th, 2012|Bart’s Biography, New Testament Manuscripts, Reader’s Questions, Reflections and Ruminations|

Income from Books

QUESTION: Do you mind if I ask you about how the financial incentives for you compare between these types of projects? I assume that your books for scholars are not expected to make much money directly, although they are important for your career in other ways. Textbooks are very expensive compared to popular books; for example the list price for your textbook “The New Testament” (paperback) is $65. That’s actually not particularly high as textbooks go, but still at least three times as expensive as your popular books. Its also longer of course at 600 pages vs e.g. about 250 pages for “Misquoting Jesus” so they must take you longer to write. How does the compensation on your end compare? RESPONSE: Not a problem -- there's nothing very secretive about it. The first thing to say, though, is that authors have NO say (*NO* say!) over the price of their books. Publishers don't even ask for an author's opinion! Scholarly books are not profitable, and usually pay nothing or next to nothing. In lots [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T19:35:31-04:00July 4th, 2012|Book Discussions, Reader’s Questions|

Would We Recognize an Original Manuscript?

READER'S QUESTION: Were we to have any *original manuscript* of any NT document in our midst, would we be able to recognize and confirm it as such? If so, how? BART'S RESPONSE: Now that’s a question I’ve never been asked before! And in fact, that I’ve never really thought about before. It’s been fun to reflect on it a bit. To get to the short answer: I think the answer would almost certainly be "No". The reasons are of particular interest, though. Suppose by chance a very early copy of the Gospel of John appeared. How would we date it? Manuscripts are dated on the basis of palaeography – an analysis of the handwriting. Since, before the invention of printing, handwriting changed slowly, over periods of time, we can collect specimens of Greek manuscripts (or Latin or Coptic etc.) and find ones that have dates written on them. We can then establish what Greek handwriting looked like at one period or another. This, of course, has all been done for us already by experts [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T19:36:05-04:00June 26th, 2012|New Testament Manuscripts, Reader’s Questions|

The Hebrew Bible and Its Sources

QUESTION: Do you have a suggestion for a book concerning the OT's construction? I believe in the History of God (by K. Armstrong) she mentioned that there were about five distinct writers for the OT. Is this the scholarly view and do you have a book suggestion to delve deeper into it? RESPONSE: Right! The Old Testament (for Christians; otherwise: the Jewish Scriptures, the Hebrew Bible; the Tanakh – these are all more or less synonyms.) It’s been on my mind a lot lately. Right now, my current writing project is a college-level textbook on the entire Bible, Genesis to Revelation. This seems to me to be way too much to cram into a semester, but as it turns out, something like half the colleges in the country teach biblical courses this way, rather than having Hebrew Bible in one semester and New Testament another. And, in my judgment, the textbooks currently available for the course are not as good as they should be. So my publisher, some years ago, urged me to write [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T19:36:13-04:00June 25th, 2012|Book Discussions, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Reader’s Questions|

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