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Terrific or Terrible? What’s Your View of Christmas?
Of all the holidays we celebrate in the U.S., Christmas evokes the most extreme emotional reactions. Where do you line up? Many of us grew up thinking Christmas was the most sacred time of the year, a time to remember and celebrate the most wonderful, touching, and humbling event in human history, the entrance of God into our world as a little child, come to save us all from our sins. Even for many of us who no longer celebrate the religious side of the holiday, it can be a time of joy, of appreciating others, of giving, and of reflection. But Christmas is obviously about a lot more than even that, at least as it has come to be institutionalized in our world. And so many of us growing up absolutely thrived on receiving gifts and having special times with family. And many of us have loved all the accoutrements of the season: snow, Christmas trees, lights, candles, decorations, festivities, carols, the movies (A Christmas Carol! The Christmas Story! It’s a Wonderful Life! White […]
December 16, 2021
The Bible’s Best Known Short Story: Jonah
Now we come to the most famous short story of the entire Bible: Jonah! Again, since it is “short” it does not take long to read – just four brief chapters – and it’s surprising so few people have actually read it. And a pity. It’s a terrific little book that is adventurous and thought-provoking. Here is what I say about it in my textbook The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction (Oxford University Press). ***************************** Of the various short stories found in the Hebrew Bible, Jonah is no doubt the best known of all. As it happens, the book is not located among the Writings, as are the other short stories we are considering. Jonah is one of the Minor Prophets, included among “the Twelve” in the Hebrew Bible. To some extent that makes sense, since the book is about Jonah making predictions of a coming destruction brought by God against a sinful people—a motif that we saw repeatedly in the other prophets. Moreover, the main character, “Jonah son of Amittai” (1:1) is named […]
December 28, 2021
If Only I Were the *Right* Kind of Fundamentalist….
I was breezing through some old posts and came across this one from many years ago; I’d forgotten all about it, but it still make me smile and scratch my head. ****************************** Several readers of this blog have pointed me to an article in the conservative journal First Things; the article (a review of a book by the evangelical scholar Craig Blomberg) was written by Louis Markos, an English professor at Houston Baptist University. The title is called “Ehrman Errant.” I must say, that did not sound like a promising beginning. I had never heard of Louis Markos before – had certainly never met him, talked with him about myself or my life, shared with him my views of important topics, spent time to see how he ticked and to let him see how I do. I don’t know the man, and he doesn’t know me. And so it was with some considerable surprise that I read the beginning of his article. “I feel great pity for Bart Ehrman.” So, from someone I don’t know, […]
December 21, 2021
A Better Kind of Fundamentalist!
Here now is my second post on that intriguing little article by Louis Markos in the journal First Things, which he entitled “Errant Ehrman.” If you’ll recall from my last post, Markos starts the article by indicating that he felt “great pity” for me because I was the wrong kind of fundamentalist back when I was a conservative Christian. My problem, he indicates, is that I applied modern standards to decide whether the Bible was inerrant. Here are his words: He [Ehrman] was taught, rightly, that there are no contradictions in the Bible, but he was trained, quite falsely, to interpret the non-contradictory nature of the Bible in modern, scientific, post-Enlightenment terms. That is to say, he was encouraged to test the truth of the Bible against a verification system that has only existed for some 250 years….. And so, as I pointed out last time, the right kind of true believer is obviously one who does not “test the truth of the Bible” by modern standards using modern criteria, but only by pre-modern, pre-Enlightenment […]
December 22, 2021
Do You Want (and Need) a Free Membership to the Blog? Gift Offer 2021
Thanks to the incredible ongoing generosity of members of the blog, I am happy to announce that there are a limited number of free one-year memberships available. These have been donated for a single purpose: to allow those who cannot afford the annual membership fee to participate on the blog for a year. I will assign these memberships strictly on the honor system: if you truly cannot afford the membership fee, but very much want to have full access to the blog, then please contact me. Do NOT reply here, on the blog, as a comment. Send us a separate email, privately, at [email protected] .In your email, please provide me with the following information: Your first and last name. Why you would like to take advantage of this offer — that is, why you can’t afford it. I don’t need or want all the details, just an idea of why you aren’t able just now to purchase a membership. Country of citizenship (we’re required, as a non-profit, to ask). Your preferred personal email. Your preferred user […]
December 13, 2021
Vote for your Favorite Platinum Guest Post!
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December 15, 2021
Which King of the Jews Do You Prefer? Christmas Message, 2021
Over the years I’ve said a lot about the New Testament, usually showing its manifold and various problems. But at most that’s half the story, and probably a lot less. There is something far more important: once you realize there are problems with a literal or historical reading, there is still the STORY. And the story can be quite powerful. Like all good stories, those of the New Testament can and should make us think and reflect. These are, at any rate, some of the most famous, influential, and life-changing stories in the world, not necessarily because they are historical (some are, some aren’t) but because they have a message to convey. One of the most powerful and paradoxical stories involves Jesus’ birth in Matthew 2. He is born in Bethlehem and wisemen astrologers from the East realize that something of cosmic significance has happened. It is proclaimed in the heavens. They follow a star to where the King of the Jews has been born and come to Jerusalem to make inquiries. The Great King […]
December 25, 2021
Reminder! Platinum Webinar on Saturday. You Platinums Only!
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December 16, 2021
What I’m Reading These Days. You?
Before Christmas this year I read Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. It’s a great story. (Novella? It’s about a hundred pages in my edition.) I used to read it every year. In my first marriage, for a number of years, my wife and I read it out loud to each other on Christmas Eve. Just about everyone knows the story but almost always from the movies and stage productions. Most of those are just fine, some are actually pretty good. BUT, there is nothing like the book. It’s extraordinarily moving, and even beyond that, the writing is fantastic. For about thirty years now I’ve read high quality fiction, by which I mean fiction that is thoughtful and thought provoking and written by people who really know how to write. Most novels aren’t written particularly well, but when you read one that is, you just sit back and admire. My GOD that’s a fantastic sentence! I wish *I* could write a sentence like that! For my money, Dickens is one of the best of all time. In […]
December 29, 2021
Evangelical Support for Misquoting Jesus: Kurt Jaros, Guest Post #3
Here now is the third of Evangelical theologian and apologist Kurt Jaros’s videos supporting my views of the manuscript tradition of the New Testament against critiques leveled by fellow evangelicals. Watch, see, and enjoy! Misquoting Ehrman – Part Three: Methods “After describing how some Christian scholars have built a strawman out of Bart Ehrman’s view, I offer a theory as to why some Christian apologists and scholars have misunderstood Bart Ehrman’s position. It is not because they intentionally seek to destroy Ehrman, but because they conflate some ideas. One scholar in particular does a far better job at understanding Ehrman’s view from Misquoting Jesus than others. Also, the video ends on a cliff hanger, so watch all the way through!”
December 26, 2021
The Famous Short Stories about Daniel
Here I continue and conclude my discussion of short stories in the Hebrew Bible, with some of the favorite Sunday School stories of all time, found in the book of Daniel. Again, I draw here on my college textbook, The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction to the Early Christian Writings. ****************************** The book of Daniel is counted among the Major Prophets of the English Bible, but in the Hebrew Bible it is not one of the prophets at all; it is included in the Writings. This is almost certainly because it was the last book of the Hebrew Bible to be written (as we will see later), and when it came to be placed in circulation and more widely known, the collection of Latter Prophets was already considered to be a closed canon, containing, like the Former Prophets, four scrolls: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and The Twelve. In some respects it makes sense that Daniel is included as a book among the prophets in English Bibles, both because the main character is portrayed making prophetic […]
January 9, 2022
Gold Q&A for December! Ask Away….
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December 19, 2021
Bart Behaving Badly: Podcasts on the Problem of Suffering
I’m getting much more mellow and much less feisty the older I get, but, well, I still have my moments. I’ve always loved a good argument and for most of my life I could get pretty intense when having one – even when it was about something that really was quite immaterial. These days, though, I pretty much have a live and let live attitude. In part I imagine that’s because I realize that all of us are probably wrong about lots of things (most?) and usually it doesn’t much really matter, as long as being wrong doesn’t do anyone much harm. Let the one without error be the first to cast a stone. But I’ve had a couple of bad experiences in the past month on podcasts I’ve done, when I wasn’t my usual affable self and I’ve been trying to figure out what set me off, making me rather hyper-confrontational and – can you believe it? – possibly (probably) pretty rude. As I’ve thought about it I’ve come to realize (or at least […]
January 2, 2022
How I Begin My Book on Revelation
I have finished a draft of my book on Revelation and am now having readers take a look at it, both layreaders and experts. Once I get their comments back I’ll make revisions and then get it sent out to the publisher; the plan is to have it published in the spring of 2022. I may change all this, but here is how at this point I’m planning to start the book, in ch. 1. ****************************** I was expecting a good deal of culture shock when I moved to North Carolina in 1988. I had spent ten years in New Jersey, four of them teaching at Rutgers University in New Brunswick. It was a position I loved: teaching New Testament to students who were curious but not, as a rule, particularly invested in the subject before taking the class. Most of my students there were Roman Catholic, at least nominally; others were Jewish or completely secular. Not many were Bible-reading evangelicals. I was pretty sure things would be different in the south. The University of […]
January 6, 2022
Jewish Indifference to Jesus and the Problems it Caused: Guest Post by Dan Kohanski
As you know, Platinum members of the blog are allowed to submit posts for other Platinum members, and other members vote on which of them should be provided to the blog as a whole (It’s a nice perk. You should think about moving up to Platinum. There are other perks too–one, of course, is that you are contributing a larger amount to the charities we support!) The most recent winner is this intriguing post by Dan Kohanski, about why most Jews had no interest in joining the Jesus movement. Dan will be happy to respond to your comments and questions. ****************************** Why did only a fraction of one percent of all Jews in the empire or even in Judaea ever believe in the message of the Jesus Movement?[1] The answer starts with that message itself. The first members of the Movement were all Jews themselves, saw themselves as Jews, and argued that Jewish traditions and beliefs inevitably led to their version of Judaism. However, the way they used those traditions and beliefs to solve the […]
January 8, 2022
Recording of Platinum Webinar: Six Versions of the Advent of Jesus
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December 21, 2021
My Pet Peeve: Simplistic Answers to Explain Suffering
In my last post I discussed two things that get under my skin in professional contexts, making me blow my top (to mix the metaphor): ignorance posing as expertise (not just in biblical studies but generally) and facile answers, by “experts,” to the biggest personal/philosophical/religious problem people have to face, why there is suffering in the world if there is an all powerful and loving God in charge of it. As I pointed out, I have no problem with people in general not knowing lots of things. I don’t know massive amounts of things. But I at least acknowledge it and try not to pretend to be an expert in something I have only a casual knowledge of. And I have no objection to people having answers that make sense to them, explaining why they themselves, or those they love, or the millions of people they don’t know experience such misery and pain, suffering in extremis. I do object when people who claim to be experts spread simplistic answers to difficult questions without bothering to […]
January 5, 2022
End of the Year Assessment: The Blog, 2021
Here we are at the end of the year. What a year. We thought we would see the end of the pandemic and the good times would roll. Well, not exactly. They sure seemed about to roll but, nope, just when we thought the thing was ending … hello Omicron! I hope you have come through it OK so far, and that you can keep safe as we move forward. Not for all, but for some there have been bright spots through the darkness, and we should certainly celebrate them. It’s been a very good year for the blog – the best ever – and so that part’s good. We started this blog venture in April of 2012, so this is the conclusion of the ninth calendar year. We now head into year 10! Who woulda thought? Certainly not me…. As you know, I have had two goals for the blog from Day 1, and have never wavered on them. I’d say we’ve done unusually well this year in achieving our goals for the blog, […]
December 31, 2021
They Ain’t Who You Think: Prophets in the Old Testament
One of the problems with blogs on the New Testament, and in fact in understanding the New Testament at all, is that it is very difficult to explain what’s happening in the New Testament without assuming a lot of knowledge about the Old Testament, but even devoted students of the New Testament don’t know much at all about the Old Testament. So where do you begin? I wanted to have a couple of posts on the differences between the understandings about the very basic question of “salvation” in Jesus and Paul; then I realized to explain either one I’d have to go over the basic ideas of Jewish apocalypticism; then it occurred to me that it would be useful to address the historical roots and development of apocalypticism; then I realized I couldn’t really do that without talking about the classical prophets of the Old Testament (Isaiah, Jeremiah, etc.). But then it occurred to me that to do that I’d have to explain what “prophecy” even was in the OT, before the classical prophets. I […]
January 11, 2022
Aren’t They Predicting the Future? More on the Prophets of the Old Testament
In my previous post I began to explain who the prophets of Scripture are, what they stand for, and what their message is. In my experience, most people — even most Bible readers — don’t actually know. The general idea appears to be that prophets were all about predicting the coming of Jesus and the end of the world. Nope. Just read them and see. Here I can give some broad historical information about the prophets to get the ball rolling. I am taking this discussion from my book The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction, 2nd ed. (Oxford University Press), slightly edited. The Narrative Prophets: Elijah and Elisha The earliest major prophets of the Old Testament (after Moses) show up in the narratives of the collection of books scholars call the Deuteronomistic History (the historical books that come right after the Pentateuch: Joshua through 2 Kings which tell about the establishment and early centuries of the nation of Israel). These prophets are not known to have left anything in writing (in contrast to […]
January 12, 2022