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What Do YOU Think? Does Biblical Scholarship Change, Damage, or Destroy the Claims of Faith?
I have talked a lot on the blog about my understanding of how biblical scholarship relates to Christian faith claims. Since the early 19th century critical scholars have dug deeply into the Bible and discovered discrepancies, contradictions, historical errors, geographical mistakes, anachronisms, and claims that make no sense in light of what we know about the world today from biology, geology, astronomy, physics, anthropology, and … and well the list goes on. Different people draw different faith conclusions from this kind of scholarship. Some think it’s irrelevant to their faith; others think it requires them to change what they believe, possibly radically; yet others think that it negates the possibility of faith altogether — either confirming the atheism they already hold or driving them to abandon their faith and become non-believers. Is any of these a sensible option? Is any of them the obvious and necessary option? What about the obstacles that stand in the way of change, unrelated to biblical scholarship, such as not being able to leave a conservative evangelical community because of […]
October 30, 2021
Must Jesus Divide Families? Platinum Guest Post by Douglas Wadeson
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Tags: Platinum
October 21, 2021
Those Darn Demons! Guest Post by Douglas Wadeson
Here is an intriguing guest post! And a controversial one. Did Jesus actually heal people? As you know, blog members who are at the Platinum level can submit posts for other Platinum members. Would you be interested in doing so? Move up to Platinum! Every month or so, Platinum members can vote on a recent post to appear on the entire blog. This is the current WINNER. Our guest poster is Doug Wadeson, himself a medical doctor with (obviously) a lifelong interest in healing but also a keen interest in the historical study of the NT Gospels. In this series he combines these two interests and provides some some unusually interesting reflections. ****************************** The Gospels portray Jesus as performing amazing miracles. Some of them have to do with nature, such as calming a storm or turning water into wine. Most have to do with healing a variety of afflictions, including leprosy and possibly other infectious diseases (like Peter’s mother-in-law, and maybe Jairus’ daughter?), blindness, being mute and deaf, paralysis (or some form of crippling […]
November 3, 2021
A New Three-Week Book Club!
Last month we had our first Blog Book Club (the BBC) and it was a smashing success. The feedback has been tremendous. There were three sessions, the first two to discuss two different books (one by me, one by someone who did not like the one by me!) and then the third a Q&A with me to address the issue. So we’re gonna do it again! The format will be slightly different. This time for the first meeting, participants will read the first book about Jesus EVER to become the #1 Bestseller on the New York Times Bestseller list, Reza Aslan’s Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth. The second meeting (two weeks later to give you time to read) participants will read my book about Jesus, which advances a very different, contrary understanding, Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium. Neither book is responding to the other. I wrote mine before Reza wrote his. They simply have different understandings of who the historical Jesus was, in rather striking and important ways. The […]
October 21, 2021
How I’ve Changed My Approach To Writing
In a previous email I mentioned that I had started writing my trade book on Revelation, tentatively titled Expecting Armaggedon. Over the past couple of months I have been reflecting on how my approach to writing books like this has changed over time. I talked about my basic procedure a few years ago on the blog: https://ehrmanblog.org/how-i-write-the-crucial-phase/ The basic line is that I typically spend a couple of years doing the research and making very detailed outlines of the book, chapter by chapter, and then a short amount of time writing it. The process I described there still holds for the most part (it’s a process that I’ve tried to convince every single graduate student I’ve ever had to follow, and every single one of them has decided not to!) (to their advantage, often…) But I’ve changed my approach to the writing itself. As I recently mentioned, my first trade book was Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium. Once that was finished, I decided (again) to move back to hard-core scholarly writing. But a […]
November 4, 2021
The Massive Diversity of Early Christianity. My Book: Lost Christianities
In my previous post I mentioned my second trade book, Lost Christianities (Oxford University Press, 2003). I just now looked at the beginning of the book; I hadn’t read it in years. It made me want to read it again! I do know there are things I would change if I did the book now: my understanding of Gnosticism and the Gospel of Thomas are different, for example. But on the whole, I still rather like it. But books are like that. They’re like your children. Each one is near and dear to your heart. Here is how Lost Christianities starts. Chapter One Recouping Our Losses It may be difficult to imagine a religious phenomenon more diverse than modern-day Christianity. There are Roman Catholic missionaries in developing countries, who devote themselves to voluntary poverty for the sake of others, and evangelical televangelists with twelve-step programs to assure financial success and prosperity. There are New England Presbyterians and Appalachian snake handlers. There are Greek orthodox priests committed to the liturgical service of God, replete with set prayers, […]
November 6, 2021
Time Magazine Cover Story on Lost Christianities. Kind Of….
When I wrote a post about Lost Christianities yesterday, a funny anecdote occurred to me and I wondered if I had ever written a post on it. Yup, in 2012! It’s worth repeating. It has to do with Time Magazine (though it starts with Newsweek). This was back when people used to actually get these things in the mail, in the Pleistocene Age, and they were therefore a bit of a bigger deal. Here’s the post, from nine years ago. ****************************** Yesterday I learned that a story I wrote for Newsweek on the birth of Jesus was made the cover story this week. It’s kind of a goofy cover, but hey, I had nothing to do with that! The issue is now available. Get ‘em while they’re hot. I want to reflect for a second on the cover story of a news magazine. I never realized it before getting involved with that (very strange) world, although it makes good sense once you think about it, but they really can’t decide on what goes on the […]
November 9, 2021
God’s Mercy and Justice: The Opening of a Chapter in Journeys to Heaven and Hell
Do the early Christians think God is more just and determined to punish or more merciful and determined to forgive? I deal with the matter in one of the chapters in my next scholarly book, Journeys to Heaven and Hell: Tours of the Afterlife in the Early Christian Tradition, coming out in April with Yale University Press. The book has been done for months now, and I am right now reading through the final page proofs sent to me by the press – making final corrections of typos before it heads into production. (It’s a very long process: usually a book doesn’t get published for about a year after the author has finished writing it and sent it to the publisher. This always reminds me of the famous poem of John Donne, “Hymn to God the Father,” with its celebrated refrain (about God forgiving sin): “When thou has done, thou hast not done, for I have more.”). The book is written for scholars, but with a few helps non-scholars will be able to get the […]
November 10, 2021
Webinar of Interest? Dune and Islam! How To Understand the Movie.
This announcement is not directly related to the blog — but some of you may be interested. My long-time colleague (of nearly 30 years!) Carl Ernst, one of the leading experts on Islam in North America, will be holding a remote webinar for my Department of Religious Studies, along with another expert (a PhD from our program) on how Islam influenced “Dune” — both the book (which I *loved* in college!) and the movie (which does look amazing). It will be Saturday November 13. Interested? You don’t have to have read the book or seen the movie for the discussion to be extremely enlightening. Here’s the info! Webinar on Dune and Islam: How To Understand the Movie Frank Herbert’s Dune is inspired by themes from the history of Islam that are both direct and subtle. Carl Ernst and Michael Muhammad Knight will discuss the new film and the book it is based on and explore how Islam is part of its foundation on November 13, 2021 on Zoom and YouTube Live. Register here. The webinar is free. $10 suggested donation: https://go.unc.edu/PeckFundDonation Carl Ernst is a leading […]
November 7, 2021
Bill O’Reilly, Expert on the Historical Jesus!
Since I posted a bit on my book Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium, several people have asked me if I’ve ever written an evaluation of Bill O’Reilly’s blockbuster hit, Killing Jesus. It turns out, I did so, here on the blog, right after it came out in 2013. I call it a blockbuster because it was: it rose to become the #1 book (in the world!) on Amazon, and had a long run at the top of the New York Times bestseller list — staying on the list for a full 52 weeks! I’ve looked over my posts back then, and think they are still useful. Here is the first of my posts. I wrote it before I had actually starting reading the book. As you’ll see, it’s horribly elitist while explaining why it’s not elitist. I used to write posts about that on the blog. It was one of my endearing qualities that I seem to have tempered a bit. Still, I get a laugh out of thinking about my knee jerking the whole […]
November 11, 2021
Killing Jesus Is Killing Me……
Here is my second post on Bill O’Reilly’s Killing Jesus from many years ago. As you’ll see, I was no happier about the book once I started reading it than when I was anticipating doing so. But here at least I give some reasons that show my fears were starting to be confirmed. Confirmation bias? Yeah, maybe. But well, in this case, I don’t think so…. I will say, though, I was much feistier eight years ago when I wrote this thing…. ****************************** I received my copy of Killing Jesus in the mail today and started to glance at it. I know I said I would read it, but I’m just not sure I can bring myself to do it. The opening “Note to Readers” makes one’s heart sink. We are told that this will be a “fact-based book.” Oh, that’s good, the reader thinks: it won’t be biased but will be objective, based only on facts. Until you begin to read the opening page of ch. 1 “Heavily armed solders from the capital city […]
November 13, 2021
Really Riled By O’Reilly
Here I continue my rather, uh, aggressive critique of Bill O’Reilly’s Killing Jesus. ****************************** OK, I know I promised to read and review Killing Jesus. But I’m not sure I can do it. It’s just so aggravating. Pointing out its flaws is like shooting fish in a barrel. I’ll make one general comment in this post and in the next one mention one of the leading themes of the book to show why its so problematic and then, unless I have a complete change of heart or people ask me pointed questions, I think I’ll just let it go. For now, a general comment. I was one of the 4893 people who wrote a book *about* the Da Vinci Code (Truth and Fiction in the Da Vinci Code: A Historian Reveals What We Really Know about Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Constantine, 2004). The other 4892 people, so far as I know, were religious – usually religious scholars – who were afraid that Dan Brown might lead the faithful astray by his wild claims, and for religious […]
November 16, 2021
Jesus the First-Century Tea Partier
This is the final post I made years ago on Bill O’Reilly’s bestselling book (listed as nonfiction) about Jesus. ****************************** I have decided not to provide a full and detailed review of O’Reilly’s Killing Jesus. It doesn’t really deserve it, and it mainly contains more of what I have indicated before – on which see my previous posts. I will say that the book is extremely well written and easy on the eyes. It is entertaining. A lot of human-interest material, which is both its strength and its very great weakness, as almost all of this, as I’ve mentioned before, is simply MADE UP, even though it is presented as if were historical fact. There is page after page after page of that kind of thing. This is not a research book written by a scholar and his writing buddy — with, for example, footnotes indicating where they got their information from. It can’t be that, since almost all of the details didn’t come from ancient sources but from their own fertile imaginations. And since […]
November 17, 2021
Should You Give Up All Your Possessions to Be Happy? The Ancient Cynic View
In my forthcoming book Journeys to Heaven and Hell (Yale University Press; due out in April) I will be devoting a chapter to discussing how tours of the afterlife functioned sometimes in order to promote certain ethical views. If you know what life after death is really like, it can be incentive for how you live now. One of the sections of this chapter deals with ancient “Cynic” philosophy – a radical stand on the importance of giving up everything, all one’s possessions, in order to attain to true happiness. That is not easy to do, as Jesus’ followers discovered later, even though they stood in an entirely different ideological tradition (apocalyptic Judaism). The Cynic view is embodied in a very humorous fictional “Journey” to Hades by one of my favorite writers from antiquity, Lucian of Samosata. Here is how I will be describing Cynicism in my book – to be followed in the next two posts with a discussion of Lucian’s account. ****************************** It is not a simple task to summarize ancient Cynicism: the […]
November 20, 2021
A Humorous Take on Wealth From a Great Satire of Antiquity
In my previous post I discussed the radical views of Cynic philosophy – to be happy you must give up everything that can be lost, including all your possessions and your attachments to them. That was a set-up for what I really wanted to discuss, a “Journey to the Afterlife” (technical term: Katabasis) found in the writings of Lucian of Samosata, one of the great writers of Satire in the Roman world, writing in the second century CE. Here I introduce Lucian and begin to talk about his very funny dialogue, The Downward Journey. (Again, this is taken from a draft of my book Journeys to Heaven and Hell, to come out from Yale University Press in April) ****************************** Born in Samosata on the Euphrates, outside the centers of intellectual power and not known for its cultural icons, Lucian originally would have spoken Aramaic but he came to be trained in Greek rhetoric. He eventually abandoned law for a literary career. Some eighty of his prose pieces survive, many of them attacks on charlatans and […]
November 21, 2021
Why Cynics Thought Being Poor Was Ironically Better
Isn’t it better to have no possessions at all than to have millions of them and then lose them? According to ancient Cynic philosophy: Absolutely Yes! I’ve been discussing how this view comes to be embodied in Lucian’ of Samosata’s humorous dialogue Downward Journey, about a rich tyrant who abused his power and wealth and then ended up completely miserable in the afterlife. I begin here with the paragraph that ended the last post, to provide a bit of context for the humorous passage that follows. (All this is taken from my book Journeys to Heaven and Hell, with Yale University Press, due out in April) ****************************** The dialogue shifts then to another of the deceased, an impoverished cobbler, Micyllus. He too is upset, but not for being removed from the world of the living but for being delayed from crossing the Styx. He cannot get to the underworld fast enough, and is perturbed that Charon’s boat has filled up without him and he has to wait on shore. Clotho is surprised that Micyllus does […]
November 23, 2021
Gold Q&A for November!
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Tags: Gold
November 9, 2021
Why Do Fundamentalists Support the State of Israel?
Have you ever wondered why fundamentalists are adamant Zionists? (Did you know they were and historically always have been?) It seems to outsiders a bizarre mystery: you love Israel but you hate Jews? Well, OK, you say you love Jews, but how exactly do you show it? By supporting Israel, I guess. But Israel is a nation and the Jews are individual people, most of whom have nothing to do with the state of Israel, at least directly. And even if you do love individual Jews, let’s be realistic here: you think that even though God is in favor of Israel, all the Jews will be going straight to hell. What’s that all about? Many fundamentalists, of course, believe that Jews in the end will be saved. But not while remaining faithful Jews. They will convert to become followers of Jesus. So they will be saved as Christians, not as Jews. Those who don’t convert, even the heroes of modern-day Israel, well… sorry.. If God is opposed to non-Christian Jews, why is he pro-non-Christian Israel? […]
November 24, 2021
My New Great Courses Offering, Just Out!
I was pleased a couple of weeks ago to see that my new course for the Great Courses (formerly called the Teaching Company; now called Wondrium [??]) “The Triumph of Christianity” has now seen the light of published day. This is my ninth course for them and is obviously based on my book of the same name. Do you know about the Great Courses? If not, you should. They are *terrific*. I don’t mean mine – I mean in general. I’ve watched a ton of them, on Classical music, astronomy, psychology, neurology, Roman history, and and and. They get really fine lecturers (except for the ones they hired a long time ago, not to name names). All but one course I’ve seen has been superb. Bart Ehrman Great Courses I did my first course for the Company in 1999, published, I think in 2000. In fact, I did two courses at virtually the same time, an Introduction to the New Testament and a Life of the Historical Jesus. I was absolutely convinced, and told them […]
December 7, 2021
Announcement: Did the Christmas Story Really Happen? Upcoming All-Day Event! (VIDEO)
Christmas is upon us already, and I have decided to do a tis-the-season all-day webinar on Sunday, December 5: “Did the Christmas Story Really Happen?” The webinar will not be connected with the blog per se, except to the extent that I’ll be doing it and that some of you might be interested in coming. >> You can register by clicking here. It will be a full and unusually intriguing day, four lectures each with Q&A: two in the morning, a break for lunch, then two more. The talks will each be around 50 minutes with 20-25 minutes Q&A (each). Whoa! Topics: The topics will focus on different aspects of the birth of Jesus in popular imagination, the biblical tradition, legendary materials, and … and what we can say historically. There are lots of intriguing issues here: Why is Jesus’ birth – the “virgin birth,” in “Bethlehem,” to “Joseph and Mary” etc. – mentioned in only two of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament? In particular, why is it not mentioned in two […]
November 18, 2021