Reflections and Ruminations Archives - The Bart Ehrman Blog

Bart’s personal comments and reflections.

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|

How Strikingly Few Early Churches Were There? How Amazingly Many Christian Letters?

In his important and stimulating article, “Christian Number and Its Implications,” Roman historian Keith Hopkins next begins to think about the implications about the size of the Christian church at different periods. One point to emphasize is that there was not simply one church. There were lots of churches in lots of places, and it is a myth to think that they were all one big cohesive bunch. On the contrary, they were often (as we see in our records) often at odds with each other. But even more than that, even within one city – if it was large enough (think Rome or Antioch for example) there would have been more than one church. And why? Because there would have been too many people to meet in one place. The first time we have any evidence of a church “building” – that is, what we today normally think of as a church (the Baptist church on the corner; the Methodist church up the street) – is not until the middle of the third Christian [...]

BDEhrman2024-08-30T17:27:28-04:00September 5th, 2024|Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations, Spread of Christianity|

Losing Your Religion: Today and in Antiquity

Many of us have agonized over leaving the faith we held dear and clung on to for long periods of our life. Most of us have never thought about what it would have been like for ancient peoples to leave *their* religions, not to move to agnosticism or atheism, but because a *different* religion was taking over. That is part of what I address in my book The Triumph of Christianity (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2017). I have been providing posts summarizing the issues I address in my various popular books. I'll continue to do that now with Triumph. This is how I begin the book, not in a place one might expect! But with one of the great poets of doubt in modernity... ****************************** In my junior year of college I took a course in English literature that made me understand for the first time how painful it can be to question your faith. The course introduced me to poets of the nineteenth century who were struggling with religion. Even though I was [...]

BDEhrman2024-08-18T16:11:58-04:00August 22nd, 2024|Bart’s Biography, Reflections and Ruminations|

Finishing and Publishing My Dissertation
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Finishing and Publishing My Dissertation

New Testament Manuscripts, Reflections and Ruminations

Finishing and Publishing My Dissertation

This is the third and final post I'll do on my dissertation on the Gospel quotations in the writings of Didymus the Blind, advised by the great New Testament scholar Bruce Metzger. 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. Metzger took an approach that other students may have found frustrating, but that was absolutely [...]

BDEhrman2024-07-04T10:39:17-04:00July 2nd, 2024|New Testament Manuscripts, Reflections and Ruminations|

How I View the Bible as Both a Critical Scholar and a Christian: Guest Post by Judy Siker

This is the second guest post by Judy Siker, who explained in her previous post about her upbringing as a Christian in the South and then her move into the academic study of the Bible from a critical perspective. If you recall, Judy was my student in the (very secular!) graduate program in New Testament/Early Christianity here at UNC, where she did both a Masters and PhD in the field, focusing, in her dissertation, on the socio-historical background to the Gospel of Matthew, in particular as that involved the relations of Jews and Christians in the author's community. She then had a rich and varied teaching career in a range of schools -- private liberal arts, Catholic university, and Baptist seminary, among them! In this follow up post Judy lays out her understanding of what the Bible is (among other things, a book that asks compelling questions about matters of faith) and is not (a book that gives us all the incontrovertible answers), partly in response to comments and questions she received. She is willing [...]

BDEhrman2024-06-24T09:50:50-04:00June 30th, 2024|Reflections and Ruminations|

Is It Possible To Continue Believing? Guest Post by New Testament Scholar Judy Siker

Aren't critical scholars of the NT more or less bound or driven to stop believing? I've decided to provide two reposts on the question, since I continually get asked about it. First: my introduction to the issue and the guest poster. ****************************** One of the questions I get asked the most frequently from blog members is how someone can possibly continue to be a believing Christian if they understand the enormous problems presented by the critical study of the New Testament. I always tell them that in fact it’s not only possible – it happens all the time. Sometimes they are incredulous, but it’s not only true, it’s so true that my friends who know everything I know about the Bible and are still believers often find the question / issue completely puzzling. They have trouble understanding why anyone thinks it’s a problem. As we learned from "Cool Hand Luke" (a great movie, btw, with tons of Christ-images), “What we have here is a failure to communicate.” I have asked my former student and long-time [...]

BDEhrman2024-06-24T09:57:10-04:00June 29th, 2024|Reflections and Ruminations|

Does Altruism Even Exist? Some Personal Reflections Based on a Crazy Anecdote

In my book on altruism (yet to be finished!), I'm thinking about including the following as a way to begin reflecting on the question of whether anything like "pure" altruism exists (where someone acts entirely for the sake of another with no benefit at all for the self). Let me know your thoughts. ****************************** One might think that “altruism” is a non-problematic term. It comes from the Latin word “alter” which means “other," and so refers broadly to actions that benefit someone other than oneself. It stands in contrast with “egoism,” based on the Greek word “ego,” meaning “I” or “myself,” and therefore referring to actions that benefit oneself. That all seems simple enough: the terms differentiate between doing things for others and doing things for ourselves. But it turns out that in practice it is difficult – possibly impossible – to establish clear boundaries between altruism and egoism. As a result, philosophers, psychologists, and evolutionary biologists perennially debate how to understand the terms. I’ll illustrate the problem by telling a strange personal anecdote. Did [...]

BDEhrman2024-06-17T11:30:36-04:00June 23rd, 2024|Reflections and Ruminations|

Some Random Reflections on Our Significance

I think a lot about significance these days, about why we, or rather, why I, matter. I mean really, this universe is 13.8 billion years old and I’ve been around for, well, 68 of those years and certainly won’t be around for another 68. So, for how much of time to this point? Do the math. Then there’s the space factor. I’m a small dot in my house; my house is a small dot in my neighborhood; my neighborhood is a small dot in my city; my city is a small dot in my state; my state is a not-large dot in the country; the country is a not-large dot on the planet; our planet is a tiny dot in the solar system; the solar system is an infinitesimal dot in the galaxy of some 100 billion stars; our galaxy is an an even more infinitesimal dot in a universe of maybe 2 trillion galaxies. And the universe itself? Who knows if there is a multiverse? Where does that leave me? Tiny doesn’t [...]

BDEhrman2024-02-25T21:22:17-05:00February 21st, 2024|Reflections and Ruminations|

Making the Bible Benevolent: Guest Post by Jill Hicks-Keeton

Is the Bible "Good News" for everyone, or, does it just seem good to those who want it to be? And how do readers make it good in places that on any honest reading are not (think violence and the treatment of women and slaves). Jill Hicks-Keeton, Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Sourthern California, has recently published an intriguing book that is highly controversial in some circles (those who do what she describes) and a breath of fresh air in another, an analysis of how evangelical Christians work to make the Bible not just acceptable but good through and through. Her study is called The Good Book: How White Evangelicals Save the Bible To Save Themselves. (Available here: Good Book: How White Evangelicals Save the Bible to Save Themselves: Hicks-Keeton, Jill: 9781506485850: Amazon.com: Books) I've asked Jill to talk about the book in a couple of posts on the blog. Here's the first, with a teaser for the second! ****************************** Millions of Americans report understanding the Bible as the Word of [...]

BDEhrman2024-01-16T14:48:32-05:00January 27th, 2024|Book Discussions, History of Biblical Scholarship, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

How’s the Christian World Doin’ These Days with the Ethics of Jesus?
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How’s the Christian World Doin’ These Days with the Ethics of Jesus?

Book Discussions, Reflections and Ruminations

How’s the Christian World Doin’ These Days with the Ethics of Jesus?

Jesus had a distinctive ethical view, significantly different from the ethics propounded and followed by most people in his world. And, well, by most people in ours. Even some (many? most?) who claim to be Jesus' followers. Or so it appears to me when I look at what Jesus actually teaches and observe what some (many?) modern Christians both do and say. I've spent the past five posts summarizing what I plan to cover in my book The Origins of Altruism: How the Teachings of Jesus Transformed the Conscience of the West. If history holds the publisher will be giving it a different title, and at this point for me the title's not the main thing. Writing it is! The foci are Jesus' teachings on love, charitable giving, and forgiveness, how these teachings contrasted with those commonly followed in the Roman world at the time, how they were modified and softened by his own followers after his death, and how they nonetheless came to play an oversized role in the understanding of "how should we [...]

BDEhrman2024-01-22T11:43:32-05:00January 24th, 2024|Book Discussions, Reflections and Ruminations|

Putting Final Polish on a Bible Translation. Ouch.

In my previous post I mentioned how I started a full-time research position for the New Revised Standard Version in 1987-88. I had several roles to play in that position. Probably the most difficult involved trying to make sure that there was a consistency in the translation, from one biblical book, passage, and verse to another. How does one determine if a translation is internally consistent? It’s not easy. I had to work through the entire translation, and whenever I came across a key term in the Hebrew or Greek that had been rendered into English in one way in one passage, I had to check whether it was rendered similarly in other passages where the same word occurred. I should stress that the translators were absolutely not bound and determined to translate the same Hebrew (or Greek) word the same way every time it appeared in the Bible. In some contexts a word will be better translated one way, in others another. But they at least had to be aware of the [...]

BDEhrman2024-01-02T12:34:27-05:00January 7th, 2024|History of Biblical Scholarship, Reflections and Ruminations|

My (Backstage) Work for the New Revised Standard Version Translation

Here I continue some of my discussion of my involvement with the New Revised Standard Translation, not as one of the translators (I was still a graduate student) but as a behind the scenes helper and research grunt. I start this post with a bit of autobiography and end with issues of translations. I have mentioned that I started out as a “secretary” for the committee when they were meeting twice a year to make decisions for the new translation, recording the decisions they made for changing the older Revised Standard Version translation. I did that for several years until they had finished their translation. I graduated from my PhD program in 1985, and I was already, at that point, teaching at Rutgers University. My position at Rutgers was a rather precarious one, professionally. In the language almost universally used today, I was an “adjunct” instructor, that is, a temporary faculty member without full (or much of any) benefits and paid as part time, even though I was teaching the full load of courses (with [...]

BDEhrman2024-01-02T16:19:46-05:00January 6th, 2024|Reflections and Ruminations|

A Sensible Approach to Inclusive Language in Bible Translation?
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A Sensible Approach to Inclusive Language in Bible Translation?

History of Biblical Scholarship, Reflections and Ruminations

A Sensible Approach to Inclusive Language in Bible Translation?

The policy of the NRSV translation committee on inclusive language, as I began to discuss in the preceding post, was sensible, in my view. It involved a three-pronged approach. Any passage that was referring to both men and women was to be rendered inclusively, even if the original language (Hebrew or Greek) used masculine terms (“men,” “man,” “brothers,” “he” etc.). Any passage that was explicitly referring only to men, or only to women, was to be left as referring only to men or to women. All references to the Deity that in the original used masculine terms were to be left masculine. Here I will say a few things about each of these policies, in reverse order. First, the deity. No one on the committee thought that the deity actually has male genitalia or other sexual distinctions. But changing every reference to God (a masculine term, since there is a feminine alternative: Goddess) or Lord (again, a feminine alternative: Lady) or … anything else, would be hugely cumbersome and distracting. And there are not literarily [...]

BDEhrman2024-01-02T12:26:00-05:00January 2nd, 2024|History of Biblical Scholarship, Reflections and Ruminations|

Is There Any Sarcasm in the New Testament?
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Is There Any Sarcasm in the New Testament?

Paul and His Letters, Reflections and Ruminations

Is There Any Sarcasm in the New Testament?

Every now and then someone asks me if there is any sarcasm used in the New Testament. You would think the answer would be fairly obviously, No. But, well, I've dealt with the issue before, and my response was Yes. Let me start by giving a definition of sarcasm. You can find various definitions just on the Internet, but the basic idea is that sarcasm is a form of humor that used irony in order to mock another. It is difficult to identify sarcasm in ancient writings. In fact, as you’ve probably noticed, sometimes it’s hard to know if someone is being sarcastic when they are speaking directly to our face. The way we typically detect sarcasm is by the context of the comment and the non-verbal signs given – the facial expression, for example, or the tone of voice used and the words orally emphasized. You have none of that for the writings of the New Testament – only a bit of information about context (inferred from the text itself) and no non-verbal signs. [...]

BDEhrman2023-11-27T20:55:16-05:00November 29th, 2023|Paul and His Letters, Reflections and Ruminations|

What’s the Best Way to Read a Non-Fiction Book?
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What’s the Best Way to Read a Non-Fiction Book?

Reflections and Ruminations

What’s the Best Way to Read a Non-Fiction Book?

I sometimes get asked what the best way is to read a work of non-fiction. Well, who knows? All I can say is what I do. I've dealt with the question here on the blog a number of times. But since I'm nearing the tail end of research on my next book dealing with the ethics of Jesus in relation to the broader world at the time, and how his ethics revolutionized the ways people in the west thought about how we ought to behave, I'm reading a lot right now, and I thought I should address the question again. My practices, in fact, have not changed much over the course of my scholarly career. My approach depends entirely on what kind of book I'm reading (I'm referring to non-fiction books here, not novels) and why I'm reading it -- that is, what I want/need to get out of it. When I was in graduate school I had a friend who insisted that anyone should be able to read an entire book of scholarship [...]

BDEhrman2023-11-13T15:11:06-05:00November 14th, 2023|Reflections and Ruminations|

Is It Better to Follow Christ or to Live a Contented Life? Paul vs. Epicurus

What would other deep thinkers in the ancient world have thought of Paul’s teachings? Short answer: not much. Earlier this year I posted on one of my favorite Greek philosophers, Epicurus (341 – 270 BCE). Epicurus acquired a bad reputation already in antiquity, and still has one among many people today, mainly because his views are widely misunderstood and often simply misrepresented. As it turns out, he advocated views that have widely become dominant in our world, and for good reasons. For that reason I’ve always read him as remarkably prescient, entertaining ideas that would not become popular for two thousand years. And they stand precisely at odds with the views of the apostle Paul. I’ve recently begun to think about this more deeply -- especially since they talk about the same *topics* but take completely different stands on them.. Unfortunately, we do not have very many of Epicurus’s writings. In fact, the most important sources we have are simply three long letters, quoted in toto by a significant but little-read author named Diogenes Laertius, [...]

BDEhrman2023-09-05T18:25:25-04:00September 20th, 2023|Greco-Roman Religions and Culture, Paul and His Letters, Reflections and Ruminations|

Bogus Arguments for Disbelief

I can completely understand why some people choose not to believe in the Christian tradition, since I too am not a Christian. But I find it a bit dismaying when people reject aspects of the Christian tradition for (literally) illogical reasons. Or even worse, attack it for illogical reasons. This often involves drawing unfounded religious conclusions from historical findings. I’m sensitive to the issue because these findings are often ones that I myself talk about (findings of others that I subscribe to after looking into them). My view is that there are good reasons for some people to hold on to their faith, and there are good reasons for other people to decide to leave the faith or never to come to faith in the first place. But why do we need Bogus Arguments for Disbelief? (Acronym: BAD) I’ll give here three examples, knowing full well that many people will object to them, especially the first one (since people regularly do, here on the blog!). I don’t mean to be slamming anyone or their beliefs; [...]

BDEhrman2023-08-26T18:38:59-04:00August 31st, 2023|Reflections and Ruminations|

Preparing for that “Final Trip” (outta here). What Do You Think?

On the questions of mortality and moving on.... A couple of weeks ago, as I was preparing for my recent course "Why I Am Not a Christian," I was reminded of one of my favorite modern novels, The Sense of an Ending, by Julian Barnes, which won the Booker Prize in 2011. What a terrific book. Short but completely compelling. Beautifully written. Moving. Thought provoking. I can’t recommend it highly enough. I won’t give up the plot, but, well, it’s about life, death, getting older, memory, and remorse. Two lines really struck me. The first is spoken by one of the characters in a history class in school in his upper sixth (that’s the year English students prepare for university; it’s a lot more rigorous than our senior years in high school) (mine anyway; and I went to an unusually good high school!). When asked, at the end of the term, what history is (looking back at all they had studied), he responds: “History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of [...]

BDEhrman2023-07-26T08:59:35-04:00August 2nd, 2023|Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

“Death is nothing to us.” What Do YOU Think?

I quote: “You need to realize that death is nothing to us. Everything that is good and bad in our lives comes from the experiences of our senses. But death brings an end to our senses/experiences. And so having the right understanding – that death is nothing to us – makes our mortality enjoyable, not because we will live forever but because we don’t pointlessly long to live forever. For there are no terrors in life for the one who fully understands that there are no terrors in not living. It is absurd for people who fear death -- not because it is afflicting them now but because they expect it will be horrible when it comes. For this allegedly most awful thing – death -- is actually nothing to us: when we exist, we are not dead, but when we are dead, we no longer exist. And so death is completely irrelevant – both to those who are living and to those who are dead. Those who are living are not experiencing it and [...]

BDEhrman2023-04-17T13:25:11-04:00April 27th, 2023|Afterlife, Reflections and Ruminations|

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|

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