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Guided Tours of Heaven and Hell in a Christian Mode
I’ve started a short thread describing the academic monograph I’ve started writing, Guided Tours of Heaven and Hell: Otherworldly Journeys in the Early Christian Tradition.. In my last post I describe two o the most important forerunners of the tradition, the Greek Homer (Odyssey 11) and Roman Virgil (Aeneid 6) — flat out fascinating texts that I’ve become obsessed with. The Christian versions are similar in ways but also profoundly different. Here is what I say about them in these reflections on my book-in-progress, written to help me clarify to myself where it’s heading, how it will be structures, and why I think it matters. I start here by repeating the very end of the previous post to stir up your memory! ************************************************************** The account of the underworld in Virgil does more philosophical work than its predecessor, Homer’s Odyssey, showing not merely that life should be prolonged, but that it must be lived properly (ethically and/or philosophically). Virgil’s account is often read as potentially hopeful – there is the chance of eternal reward for upright […]
December 21, 2019
The Case Against Miracles
I recently learned of a new book that has come out arguing *against* the idea that miracles happen. It is a collection of essays edited by John Loftus, an interesting who in some has had a similar faith trajectory as I: started as a very conservative evangelical, studied at evangelical schools, and ended up leaving the faith and becoming an atheist. Among other things, for one of his master’s degree he studied with the evangelical philosopher and apologist William Lane Craig, whom some of you have heard of. The book is called The Case Against Miracles, and I thought it would be interesting to see some bits of it here on the blog. As you know, I like to have a variety of points of view represented here, most recently Mike Licona, who is the author of the popular book Evidence of God, and whose views of miracles, I think it is safe to say, is almost precisely the *opposite* of John’s. The next two posts will be the Foreword of the book written by Michael […]
December 22, 2019
More on the Case Against Miracles: Michael Shermer Guest Post
This is the second guest post by Michael Shermer, from his Foreword to the new book edited by John Loftus, The Case Against Miracles. (For the first, see yesterday’s post) Michael is on the blog and is happy to respond to comments you have. – Michael Shermer is the author of The Science of Good & Evil and Why People Believe Weird Things, among other works. ********************************************************************* When we are thinking about miracles, as with anything else that happens in the world, what we are after is a causal explanation, and here John Loftus cuts to the chase when he cites my friend and colleague David Kyle Johnson’s definition of a miracle—winnowed-down from Hume—as “A miracle is simply an event caused by God.” As Johnson explains, “For any given event, if we knew that God took special care to cause it, we would (and should) call that event a miracle—regardless of whether it involved the violation of natural law.” However, it is important to distinguish this from something that appears divinely-caused but was, in fact, simply […]
December 23, 2019
Christmas 2019
For a long time now I’ve had ambivalent feelings toward Christmas. Some of my blog posts from years past on the day and its meaning have very much celebrated its great sides (you can just search for “Christmas” on the blog and you’ll see them). But I’ve long seen the downsides as well, frequently discussed among people we know and know about and more frequently felt even when not discussed. I still see these down sides – one above all — in some ways more and more every year. But I’ve begun to wonder if at least there might not be *something* good that can come out of them. Or at least a couple of them. The one for which I think there is no real hope is the severe loneliness and depression the season causes for so many people. It is a fraught time, when everyone else seems to be enjoying family, friends, and festivities, but so many have no one and nothing to look forward to, or horrible experiences with the holiday in […]
December 25, 2019
Why Does Matthew Have the Story of the “Wise Men”?
QUESTION: My Bible group had a good time yesterday comparing Matthew and Luke’s accounts of the Christmas story. One question that came up was why would Matthew relate the story of the Magi? RESPONSE Ah, it’s a great question and – as it turns out – an important one for understanding the Gospel of Matthew. The story is found only in this Gospel (But this time of year, who can keep ones mind from jumping to: “We Three Kings of Orient Are….”), and it is filled with intriguing conundra. For example, why would pagan astrologers from the East be interested in knowing where the King of Israel was born and come to worship him? Were they doing this for all babies who were bound to become kings of foreign countries? How does a star lead them to Jerusalem and then disappear and then reappear and lead the Magi not just to Bethlehem but stop over a *house*? How does a star stop over a house? If Herod really sent out the troops to kill […]
December 26, 2019
The Life and Message of Paul
I return now to the next portion of a longer post I’m composing on the New Testament, a general survey in what is now looking like 10,000 words or so? My most recent segment was an explanation of what we can know about the life and teaching of Jesus: https://ehrmanblog.org/who-was-jesus/ This one is a corollary: what we can know about the life and message of Paul. Next to Jesus himself, Paul was the most important figure in the entire history of Christianity. Nearly half the books of the New Testament claim to be written by him; one other book (Acts) is largely written about him. More than anyone else we know of, he was responsible for the spread of Christianity through much of the Mediterranean world. And perhaps most important, he significantly developed the theological understanding of the significance of Jesus. For Paul, far less important than Jesus’ earthly life and teaching were his death and resurrection, which were God’s means of salvation to the world. It may be too extreme to say that Paul […]
December 28, 2019
End of the Year Final Exam!
We are near the end of the year. What better time for a final exam? In my classes I normally give essay exams — they are by far the best way to find out how much a student actually knows (as opposed to testing them for what they don’t know) and how well s/he can express thoughts in writing and develop an argument. I’ve pulled out an exam that I once gave to my students in a class called Jesus in Scholarship and Film. It’s a terrifically interesting course: we examine ancient Gospels, mainly but not exclusively the ones in the New Testament, to see what each of them is trying to teach about the life, teaching, and meaning of Jesus; then we use the Gospels as historical sources to see what we can say about the actual man himself, the life and teaching of the historical Jesus; and then we look at modern films to see how *they* portray Jesus in light of what we’ve already learned (e.g. Infancy and Crucifixion narratives in Ben […]
December 29, 2019
The Case Against Miracles: Guest Post by John Loftus
A week ago Michael Shermer posted his Foreword to the new book The Case Against Miracles, edited by John W. Loftus. The book is a collection of essays by various authors who all make arguments that what we think of as miracles — that is (as they understand it) supernatural interventions in the natural world (not just weird things that happen) — cannot be shown ever to have happened, and so should not be believed. John himself has now provided us with an introduction to the volume to describe what it tries to achieve, given below. As you will see, he lends his whole-hearted support to the views most famously advanced by the great 18th century philosopher David Hume. He and some other contributors think Hume’s arguments have not been refuted. So, what do you think? – John Loftus is the author of Why I Rejected Christianity: A Former Apologist Explains, and The End of Christianity. *********************************************** Introducing “The Case against Miracles” by John W. Loftus. This new anthology is about miracles and why […]
December 30, 2019
Blog Year in Review, 2019!
We are at the end of yet another year and I would like to take the occasion to reflect on the blog, how we’ve been doing and where we’re going, now on the cusp of 2020. (Yikes. Already?) The blog has been doing extremely well. When I started this venture in April 2012, I had no clue what I was getting into, what it would take, and what it would give. It is taking more and giving way more than I anticipated at the time. I have always had two principal goals, very different from each other but both vitally important, the raisons d’être of the blog. The first, of course, is to disseminate serious critical knowledge about the New Testament and early Christianity to a wider public. It is amazing how much bad and simply wrong information is out there on the Internet. Especially on topics pertaining to religion. In particular the religion that most people in the western world – those who subscribe to a religion — happen to subscribe to. A lot […]
December 31, 2019
Why Do Christians Try to Convert People?
Why Do Christians Try to Convert People? I begin this New Year by addressing a really interesting question I received recently from a reader. It’s a question that has rarely occurred to most people. Today, we tend to think that religions are by their very nature interested in converting others to their views, that they are just inherently evangelistic, missionary, and proselytizing. If your religion is “the right one,” wouldn’t you want everyone to agree with you, so they too could be right, instead of wrong? Wouldn’t their salvation depend on it? That indeed has long been the view of both Christianity and (later) Islam and … well surely all religions, right? Uh, as it turns out, the answer is No. In the world that Christianity came into, for example, in the Roman empire, there simply weren’t such things as missionary/evangelistic religions. Huh? Then why was Christianity? Here’s the question I received. Why Do Christians Try to Convert People? QUESTION: Where/how/why did the new religion ‘about Jesus’ becomes – unlike most contemporary religions up to […]
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January 2, 2020
Was Christianity a Missionary Religion with No Missionaries?
Early Christians were bound and determined to convert others to their faith, as I indicated in my previous post. Or at least that’s what their literature suggests; I very much doubt if *everyone* was! But they certainly did convert people – within four hundred years a tiny handful of the disciples of Jesus’ uneducated and unimpressive disciples had become the official religion of the entire western world. The interest in making converts made this religion unlike anything else in the Roman empire (or outside of it). Now *that’s* interesting, and different from what we could expect. But what is also odd to modern eyes is that even though Christianity was evangelistic, there were almost no evangelists. That is to say, hardly anyone – so far as we know – went on a mission to other places to convert people, with one notable exception. So how did the Christians manage to convert millions of people? That’s the subject of this post, again taken from my book Triumph of Christianity. ******************************************** Christians then, starting at least with […]
January 4, 2020
Misunderstandings???
Some blog readers have had a misunderstanding. The blog post on Jan. 2, 2021 on Why Do Christians Try To Convert People was written by *me*, not John Loftus. I’m not sure what created the misunderstanding!
Did “Luke” Really Write Luke? And the book of Acts?
Here is an important question that I received recently, which I’ve addressed long ago on the blog, before living memory. Time to address it again! The basic issue: isn’t there good evidence that the book of Acts, which describes the spread of Christianity throughout the Roman world, especially through the missionary efforts of Paul, was written by an eyewitness, an actual traveling companion of Paul who was with him for a number of his endeavors? (Whoever the author is, he wrote the Gospel of Luke as well – so he wrote more words than any other author of the New Testament! Even more than Paul.) Here’s the question and the beginning of a response, the totality of which will take two or three posts. In this beginning, I explain how the tradition started that the author was someone named “Luke” the traveling companion of Paul. ******************************************************************************* QUESTION: Acts mentions Luke as a traveling companion with Paul. And in areas where it appears the Luke joined Paul, Acts point-of-view changes from “he” to “we”, and then […]
January 5, 2020
Once More on the Credibility of Miracles: Guest post by Darren Slade
This will be my final post dealing with the recent book, The Case Against Miracles, edited by John Loftus. As you know, here on the blog we have guest posts from scholars with a wide range of views on the blog, so long as they relate to the issues we are concerned about here, the history and literature of early Christianity, starting with the New Testament. Our guest contributor now is Darren Slade, author of chapter 4 of the book. He supports the same basic view we have seen by the other two contributors, that there is not and cannot be sufficient proof of miracles, in either the ancient or the modern worlds. What do you think? One of the values of the blog is that we can see different views from ours, on topics we are all interested in. In your comments with Dr. Slade, please be respectful, even if you disagree. Dr. Slade here summarizes his views in the third person, and he will be willing to respond to comments and questions you have. […]
January 6, 2020
Problems with Thinking That Luke Wrote Luke (and Acts)
I continue now with my discussion of whether one of Paul’s traveling companions wrote the account of his life in the book of Acts, and thus, by association, the Gospel of Luke. It turns out to be a really sticky problem — one of those that can’t be solved simply by looking at a couple of verses and applying some basic logic. In my previous post I gave the logic that is typically adduced for thinking that the Luke was probably written by Luke, the gentile physician who was a companion of Paul for part of his missionary journeys. The short story, in sum: the author of Luke also wrote the book of Acts; the book of Acts in four places talks about what “we” (companions with Paul) were doing; both books were therefore written by one of Paul’s companions; Acts and Luke appear to have a gentile bias; only three of Paul’s companions were known to be gentiles (Colossians 4:7-14); Luke there is a gentile physician; Luke-Acts appears to have an enhanced interest in […]
January 8, 2020
Would You Like to Read My New Book NOW Instead of When It Gets Published???
As you may know, my next book Heaven and hell: A History of the Afterlife will be published on March 31. That’s nearly three months off. Would you like to read it *now*? I have three copies of the galley proofs that I am willing to auction off — as a fund-raiser for the blog — to be sent directly to the highest bidders. A “galley proof” is the book as it is sent out to reviewers and journals and editors and book stores well in advance – some months ago now – so they can decide whether to advertise and / or stock the book and at what quantities. They are never for sale. They are in paperback with the same kind of cover that will be on the book itself, but at a cheaper production level since they are not for display in bookstores. The book itself – the content — is as it will be published, *except* for minor stylistic things (typos here and there etc.) that had not yet been cleared […]
January 9, 2020
Did Paul Write Colossians? According to Most Scholars No – Paul did Not Write Colossians
Did Paul write Colossians? Asking and answering questions like this every now and then is useful on the blog to shift gears away from explaining at a more popular level what scholars have come to think – to showing how scholars make their arguments to one *another*. I don’t want to do this a lot, but it seems that it can be helpful at times, just so blog readers can get a bit of a sense. Right now I’m in them middle of a thread on whether the author of Luke was really “Luke the gentile physician,” one of Paul’s traveling companions. The only reason for thinking such a person even existed (a gentile doctor named Luke) is that he is mentioned by Paul in Colossians. In my previous post I explained why the majority of critical scholars don’t think Paul actually wrote Colossians (so that the historical Paul does *not* mention this person). The post was written for a general audience, and a number of people raised questions about it. So here is how […]
January 11, 2020
A Revelatory Moment about “God”
I had a “revelatory moment” last week that I think may have changed my view about “God” for a very long time – or at least about the existence of superior beings far beyond what we can imagine. As most of you know, I have long been an agnostic-atheist, and as some of you may recall, I define “atheist” differently from most people, at least in relationship to “agnostic.” The word “agnostic” means “don’t know.” Is there a God? I don’t’ know. How could I possibly know? How could you? I know a lot of you do “know” – or think you know. But my view is that if you’re in that boat you “think” there is a God – really, really think it, deep in your heart, and maybe even deeply “believe” in God – but really, at the end of the day, there’s no way to *know*, at least in the same way you “know” that you have two knees, live in Pennsylvania, or like lasagna. Anyway, I’m not asking you to agree […]
January 12, 2020
Does the Author of Acts Identify Himself?
In this thread I have been discussing whether Luke, the gentile physician, the traveling companion of Paul, wrote the Third Gospel and the book of Acts. The first point I’ve made, over a couple of posts, is that the idea that Paul *had* a gentile physician as a traveling companion is dubious. That notion is derived from the mention of Luke in the book of Colossians, but Paul almost certainly did not *write* Colossians. Paul does mention a companion named Luke in the book of Philemon, but he does not say anything at all about him (not, for example, that he was a gentile or that he was a physician). Still, one could argue – and many have! – that whatever his name, it was a companion of Paul who wrote the books of Luke and Acts. The main argument in favor of that thesis – with which I heartily disagree – is the presence of the “we-passages” in Acts, that I mentioned previously. My view is that these passages do NOT demonstrate that the […]
January 13, 2020
Two Brief Comments on intriguing topics: the unknowability of God and scholarly subterfuge!
First: Several commentors on my post about the imperceptibility of a superior divine being have pointed out that Christians commonly talk about God as beyond our comprehension. Yes indeed!! When I was a fundamentalist we too used to say, all the time, that “God is far beyond anything we can imagine.” And then we would go on and list his characteristics and attributes! 🙂 Second: Several people have pointed out to me an article in the Guardian that deals at length with the fiasco of first-century Mark that I’ve talked about on the blog (again recently) It really is a fine piece worth your reading: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2020/jan/09/a-scandal-in-oxford-the-curious-case-of-the-stolen-gospel?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other