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WE NEED BLOG VOLUNTEERS! You may know – but probably don’t! – that we have a dozen or so people who volunteer to do various things that have to be done for our blog to work (e.g., help with finances/taxes/etc; read audio posts for Gold members; run the Bart Ehrman Blog Podcast; run the Blog Forum; do social media; and more). Now some new needs have arisen, and I need some more volunteers. Interested? Do you have a few hours a week (amount TBD) to pitch in to help us as we grow, develop, and (we hope) improve? Here are the three tasks we need help with: Re-categorizing Posts As you know, the blog has been going for over ten years now; I post five times a week (counting those by guest scholars) and have done so for our entire history. We currently have over 3000 posts, all of them available in our archives. It is relatively easy to search the archives for posts, either by looking up each category and going through the […]

Public Forum

August 26, 2022

I’m Thinking about Starting a Podcast. Your Opinion?

I am thinking about starting a Podcast and would like your opinion. This would be *different* from the Ehrman Blog podcast that we’ve had for years (and is now in hiatus as we redesign it) and, of course, from the audio versions of the blog already made available to gold and platinum members. It would not be connected with the blog per se – though hopefully it would draw attention to and attract new members to the blog It would instead be my own thing for the Bart Ehrman Professional Services, the site where I host my online courses, push my books, and offer consultation services (www.bartehrman.com) But I mention it to you, my blog readers, because among the members of the human race, you are the ones who most follow my work, and I would welcome your advice. For years people have urged me to do a Podcast, and I’ve always thought – Whoa! Way too much work! But now I’m thinkin’: Hey, why not join the 21st century? If the goals of my […]

Public Forum

September 6, 2022

Love. How I’ve Shifted the Focus of My Book on Charity.

As I’ve indicated, my plan is, or rather was, to write a book that argued that Christians radically changed the understandings of wealth and the practices of “giving” once they took over the empire. They, in effect, invented what we think of as “charity.” As I have talked it over with my literary agent and the editors at Simon & Schuster, I have decided that my study needs to be placed in a broader cultural context. Rather than focusing exclusively on the transformation of ancient understandings of wealth and the concomitant social practices of giving in isolation from their larger ideological contexts, the book will address an even more transformative Christian innovation in ancient ethical discourse, one that provided the impetus for these understandings and use of wealth. It will take several posts to explain the shift in my thinking. Here’s the starting point: Ethics were just as important to inhabitants of the Greek and Roman worlds as they are to people today. But the criteria for evaluating “proper” behavior were very different, focusing almost […]

September 10, 2022

Is There Anything “Religious” about “Ethics”?

It is true that ancient ethics did enjoin beneficent acts on family, friends, and acquaintances of one’s own status when they were in need. But normally such benefices were expected to produce gratitude and respect (elevating one’s status and social capital) and to bring a return; just as important, they were expected to be reciprocated if misfortune should strike the giver. That is, they were not acts of pure altruism, or arguably altruistic at all. Moreover, when social ethics entered into the picture – as they often did – they centered on matters of justice and piety (meaning something like “doing one’s duty” to family, city, and empire) so as to promote the welfare of the collective. But the collective did not mean “all” the collective. For the elites who wrote and read this ethical discourse, it meant the ruling elite and/or the social class to which they themselves belonged. That would, of course, make life better for themselves as well. But there was virtually no concern to help those in lower social classes — […]

September 11, 2022

A Funny Story about the Rapture

In my forthcoming book on Revelation (Title: Armaggedon: What the Bible Really Says About the End; to be published on March 21), I discuss how evangelical Christians in the 19th century came up with the idea of a “rapture” — that Jesus was soon to return to heaven to take true believers out of it before the horrible seven-year “tribulation” began. Here is a funny story about belief in the rapture from my younger days. At the time I was still a churchgoing Christian. The church I was attending was evangelical, but I was moving away from a conservative theology and its strict, literal interpretation of the Bible. I was becoming socially quite liberal, and was starting to take a more liberal view of the Bible. I still thought that in *some* sense it was the Word of God, but I did not think that it was infallible or true in every way. I had already come to see that parts of it contradicted one another, that there were historical implausibilities, and mistakes of various kinds. For […]

Tags: Left behind

September 13, 2022

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Public Forum

Tags: Platinum

September 1, 2022

Who Was The Last Non-Christian Emperor of Rome?

Most people know that Constantine was the first Christian emperor. Lots of other things they think about him are wrong — for example, that he decided or helped to decide which books would be in the New Testament or that his conversion was just a political ploy. I deal with these in my book The Triumph of Christianity (Simon & Schuster, 2019). But this one’s right. He was the first Christian emperor. It’s also right that nearly all the emperors after Constantine were Christian. I say *nearly* because of one brief but highly noteworthy exception: his nephew Julian, most frequently referred to as Julian the Apostate. Julian ruled for nineteen months in 361-63 CE. His short reign was highly significant: Julian tried to turn the empire back to the ways and worship of paganism. He is called “the Apostate” because he started out as Christian but then opted to worship the traditional gods of Rome. And he tried to enforce this view on his Empire. Here is how I describe how he did that (or […]

September 14, 2022

Jesus’ Teachings on Love and Salvation

In my previous posts I have been explaining in brief terms how people thought about “ethics” in the ancient Greek and Roman worlds, that is, how they decided what kinds of human activities were best for themselves and for their society, how they were to interact with one another, what values and virtues they should hold and what values and vices they should reject. Part of my thesis – which I hope to spell out in my next book – is that Christianity changed how people understood virtuous activity and the good life, how they urged people to behave, and why they did so. My argument will be the what we think of as the driving force of most ethics today is not at all what people in the world at large in antiquity thought. At all. So far in these posts I’ve tried to show how pagans were particularly concerned with “well-being” or “happiness” as a guide for how to live. Jesus, however, rigorously adopted a Jewish view that the main criterion for behavior […]

September 15, 2022

Is It Even Possible to Follow Jesus’ Teaching to “Love Your Neighbor as Yourself”

In my previous posts I’ve been talking about Jesus’ “love commandment,” arguing that it revolutionized ancient thinking about how people are to behave toward one another. (“Love thy neighbor as thyself”). Now I ask whether that revolution actually involved changing people’s behavior in radical ways. Or not. Obviously, on the practical level, Jesus’ insistence on complete self-sacrifice did not come to dominate the world of late antiquity. People continued to live much as they had before. Conquerors still conquered. The first Christian emperor, Constantine, was one of the most bloodthirsty of them all; many of his ardent Christian successors (including his sons) were at least as bad. Slavery continued and was never questioned. The rich dominated the poor. Men dominated women. The rich kept getting richer. Most notably, Christian churches themselves began getting very much richer. Eventually the church was by far the wealthiest institution in the west, and stayed that way for well over a millennium. Christian Ethics in the Roman Empire Even so, the ethical discourse of society did change with the Christianization […]

September 17, 2022

Why I Want to Write a Book on Christian Love

Over the past couple of weeks I have been explaining how I have reimagined my next trade book, written not for scholars but for general readers. As I’ve pointed out, my initial idea that I floated before readers of the blog was to have a book devoted to how Christianity revolutionized how people in the Roman world understood wealth and what to do with it. My argument was that as a Jew Jesus insisted that those with resources help those who were in need – a virtually unheard-of ethical principle in Greek and Roman antiquity. His followers were Jews as well, for whom this was a familiar message, but as they converted non-Jews to become Jesus’ followers, they convinced them as well. So this became the standard Christian view, leading to the invention of the public hospital, the orphanage, the use of governmental assistance for those in need, private charities, and so on. My previous posts have explained how I have now expanded the vision of the book, to show that these new views of […]

September 18, 2022

Did King David Actually Exist?

I am starting to do research for my next online course, to be given in November, dealing with the Hebrew Bible. I’ll be calling it “Finding Moses” and it will be dealing with four of the books of the Pentateuch (Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) and what we can actually know, historically, about the exodus from Egypt (Is there any archaeological evidence? Any reference to it in other texts outside the Bible? Any reason to think it did, or reasons to think it did not, happen?) and about the law of Moses (Were Jews legalistic? Did they have to keep the law for salvation? Why do some of the laws seem so strange today? Why do some people insist that some of the laws are still binding but others not? etc.). One book I’ll be rereading in thinking through the various historical issues of the Pentateuch is Israel Finkelstein and Neal Asher Silberman’s, The Bible Unearthed. I remembered I had talked about the book on the blog long ago – it’s not about Moses, but […]

September 20, 2022

My New Course: The Unknown Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John)

My new online course focusing on what scholars know about the four Gospels will soon be available on my personal website. Neither the course nor the website is part of the blog, but I am announcing it here because I know a number of blog members would be interested. The course is based on a set of remote lectures that some of you attended, and includes additional instructional materials. If you did not come but would like to know more about it, you can check it out here: https://www.bartehrman.com/courses/. It consists of eight thirty-minute (or so) lectures, with the title: “The Unknown Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.” (I call them “unknown” because most people don’t know what scholars say about them.) I’m envisioning the course as part of a long series covering the entire Bible, both Hebrew Bible and New Testament, called “How Scholars Read the Bible.” The series as a whole will be devoted to showing what historical scholars argue, believe, think, and think they know about the Bible, with some attention paid […]

Canonical Gospels

September 21, 2022

More on My New Course: The Unknown Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John

I continue here with more summaries of my lectures for my new eight-lecture online course, “The Unknown Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.” Again, this course is not connected directly with the blog: it is a separate endeavor run off my personal website for the Bart Ehrman Professional Services: you can see it here. https://www.bartehrman.com/courses/. I am posting about the lectures simply because I know a number of blog members would be interested. If you are, check it out. If you’re not, don’t! Lecture Three: What Are the Gospels? This lecture continues the story by explaining how scholarship developed with the earth-shattering book of David Friedrich Strauss, The Life of Jesus Critically Examined (1834), which claimed that both the traditional Christian supernatural understandings of the Gospels and the Enlightenment opposition to “miracle” (found for example in the work of Paulus) completely misunderstood the Gospels. Strauss’s controversial claim was that these texts were not meant to present history as it happened but “myths.” When Strauss used that term he did not mean that Jesus “did […]

Canonical Gospels

September 22, 2022

Final Lectures in My Course “The Unknown Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John”

This will be my final post providing summaries of my lectures for my new eight-lecture online course, “The Unknown Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.” As I’ve indicated before, this course is not connected directly with the blog: it is a separate endeavor run off my personal website for the Bart Ehrman Professional Services. You can see it here. https://www.bartehrman.com/courses/. I am posting about the lectures simply because I know a number of blog members would be interested. If you are, check it out. If you’re not, don’t! Lecture Six: Embracing the Differences In this lecture I build on the conclusions I have drawn so far in order to show why recognizing the differences among the Gospels is actually the key to understanding them. This kind of scholarship that finds alterations and discrepancies is not necessarily negative. It has extremely important positive effects, allowing the reader to see the point each author is trying to make. I illustrate the point by discussing three kinds of differences. First, some differences significantly heighten an emphasis of […]

Canonical Gospels

September 24, 2022

Big Questions for Studying the New Testament Gospels

In my previous posts I summarized the eight lectures that can be found on my new eight-lecture online course, “The Unknown Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.” As I’ve indicated before, this course is not connected directly with the blog: it is a separate endeavor run off my personal website for the Bart Ehrman Professional Services. You can see it here. https://www.bartehrman.com/courses/. Included in the course packet are questions for reflection, meant to help listeners think through the issues I’ve discussed and reflect on them from their own perspective. I deal with each of these issues in some depth in the course of the lectures. If you are interested in these issues, and have trouble answering the questions as fully as you like, or would like additional information about them to go on – take a look at the course and see if it’s your cup of tea! The Unknown Gospels Questions for Reflection Lecture One To what extent do you think we can understand the Gospels without knowing what scholars say about their […]

Canonical Gospels

September 25, 2022

Understanding the Gospels: Suggested Readings!

I frequently get asked what I would recommend for people to read if they are interested in the study of the New Testament. In my recent course on the Gospels (www.bartehrman.com/courses) I’m including as part of the supplement to the lectures an annotated list of suggested readings. The idea is to provide people with some guidance for important books, some to start with and some for more advanced readers. Here it is, for your perusing enjoyment! The Unknown Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John Annotated Suggestions for Further Reading Aune, David. The New Testament in Its Literary Environment. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1987. A superb introduction to the genres of the New Testament writings in relation to other literature of the Greco-Roman world. Brown, Raymond. The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in Matthew and Luke. Updated ed. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1999. A massive and exhaustive discussion of the birth narratives of Matthew and Luke, suitable for those who want to know simply everything about every detail. Brown, Raymond. The […]

September 27, 2022

How Useful Are Our Earliest New Testament Manuscripts?

It is interesting that as recently as twenty years ago almost *no one* outside a small cohort of textual geeks (like me) had much interest at all in the actual manuscripts of the New Testament. Even the majority of NT scholars (a very *large* majority) just weren’t interested. And most non-NT scholars had never heard that there was even an issue / problem. That has changed a lot. Now it’s something people seem to want to talk to me about all the time. I’ve long thought about the issues that are involved (starting when I was 17! Seriously). Here are some reflections that I made some time ago, which I ran across again recently and thought summed up one of the big problems rather neatly. ****************************** It’s a little hard to get one’s mind around the irony of our early manuscripts (the term means: “hand-written copies,” i.e., *all* the copies before the invention of printing). To reconstruct the “original” text of the New Testament – by which, for my purposes here, I mean the text […]

New Testament Manuscripts

Tags: original new testament, P46, scribes, textual criticism

October 1, 2022

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