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Is Judaism Legalistic? Misunderstanding the Law of Moses

In my upcoming course “Finding Moses” I’ll be discussing the final four books of the Pentateuch (Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) (for more information, see:  Finding Moses – Online Course Covering the Historicity of the Pentateuch – Bart D. Ehrman – New Testament Scholar, Speaker, and Consultant (bartehrman.com). Apart from the opening chapters of Exodus, these books are not well known to most Christians, even those on fairly good terms with the New Testament.  I’ve known many a reader who was determined to read the entire Bible from beginning to end, but who quit early into Leviticus.  In part that’s because these books are both hard to understand and difficult to see as interesting when not explained.  A huge chunk of them is made up of the laws given to Moses (almost the entire second half of Exodus, all of Leviticus, a good chunk of Numbers, and most of Deuteronomy).  How can reading a bunch of antiquated laws be interesting? Of course, many (MANY!) Christians just love to cherry pick these laws in order to […]

• Hebrew Bible/Old Testament

December 6, 2022

The Other Virgin Births in Antiquity

On December 14 I will be giving a one-off remote lecture, with Q&A, called “The Other Virgin Births in Antiquity.”  This will not be connected with the blog per se, but with my other venture in which I produce online courses and lectures (BEPS: Bart Ehrman Professional Services).  You can learn about the lecture here:  https://www.bartehrman.com/other-virgin-births-in-antiquity/ Jesus is decidedly conceived by a virgin in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke.  This is better called a “virginal conception” — and in my course I’ll explain the difference between the ideas of virginal conception; virgin birth; perpetual virginity; and immaculate conception.  All very different ideas! BUT, for the sake of convenience, I’ll simply refer to Jesus’  conception and birth as “the virgin birth.” Since, oh, I don’t know, the 19th century I guess, there have been people who have claimed that virgin births were common in the ancient world.  You find that claim widely today still among those who call themselves “mythicists” — those who think Jesus didn’t exist but was just a myth.  One of the most common […]

• Greco-Roman Religions and Culture
• Historical Jesus

December 7, 2022

Other Virgin Births In Antiquity! A New Online Lecture, with Q&A

I am happy to announce that I will be presenting and recording a Chrismas-season lecture “Other Virgin Births in Antiquity,” on December 14, 8:00-9:30 ET.  The lecture is not connected with the blog per se, except in sofar as y’all as blog members may well be particularly interested. You can find out about it, along with other lectures and courses that are available here: Online Courses by Dr. Bart Ehrman (10% Off First Order): This is how I’m describing the lecture in my announcement of the course in other venues. *************** Other Virgin Births in Antiquity Bart D. Ehrman Jesus of Nazareth was not the only miracle-working Son of God known to the ancient world.  Others were also said to heal the sick, cast out demons, control the weather, raise the dead, and ascend to heaven. But were any of these others born of a virgin? Search the Internet and you’ll find a definitive answer: Yes.  But ask an expert who has actually studied the ancient sources and …  and what will you learn? That […]

• Public Forum

December 2, 2022

A Truly Great New Testament Scholar: E. P. Sanders in Memoriam

I am dedicating this blog post to the memory of E. P. Sanders, one of the truly great scholars of the New Testament in modern times, who died November 21, 2022, age 85.  I was heavily influenced by his scholarship, already during graduate school, and I always considered him as the kind of massively learned and rigorous scholars that all of us should strive to be.  He more or less single-handedly revolutionized three major areas of New Testament studies, in times when virtually no one had a huge impact on *any* area.  In my view he was the most influential NT scholar of our time. Ed was born in Texas and did his PhD at Union Theological Seminar under one of the greats of the previous generation, W. D. Davies, who was himself unusually erudite scholar who focused on understanding the historical Jesus and the Gospels in light of ancient Judaism – a VERY difficult field to master.  Ed started out with religious leanings, but as he advanced in his education he moved toward a […]

• Public Forum

December 14, 2022

The Mind-Body Problem As My Personal Dilemma. What Do YOU Think?

Is there an I in me? For several years now, I have been increasingly fascinated by the brain as an organ, and by consciousness as a phenomenon.  These are not topics you can figure out simply by taking some time to muse about them – although I strongly advocate taking time to muse about them and putting some effort into musing about them seriously.  There are, of course, incredibly smart people out there with massive expertise who know and understand things beyond the ken of us mere mortals.  But even they haven’t figured out the brain (or even close; but whoa do they know a lot about it).  Or consciousness: even though, in this case, a number of people – usually philosophers – certainly claim they have, or at least that they *basically* have. It is worth reading what these folk have to say when they write simplified versions of their views in trade books designed for the rest of us who ain’t on their level.   And these versions can indeed get us to think […]

• Public Forum

December 15, 2022

Did Jesus Descend to Hell After He Died?

Someone on the blog recently asked me about the idea that after Jesus’ death, and before his resurrection, he “descended into hell.”  This is an affirmation found in the Apostle’s Creed, and so continues to be recited by millions of Christians still today.  But what does it mean? Throughout the history of the church it has usually been thought – by those who thought and/or affirmed such things — that Jesus descended to the realm of the dead to provide salvation to some (all?) of the people there, to liberate them from their condemnation (which was impossible *before* then because salvation can only come when Christ died – in this view – and so not before.  So when he died he went down to save some (or all) of those who were there, taking them from Hades to heaven.  This notion has traditionally been called “The Harrowing of Hell.” But how did it work, exactly?  And were did the idea come from? As it turns out, I devoted a chapter to the question in my […]

• Afterlife
• Early Christian Doctrine
• Historical Jesus

December 17, 2022

Did Christ Save *Everyone* When He Descended to Hades?

In my previous post I started to discuss the famous doctrine of the “Harrowing of Hell,” where Christ is said to have descended to Hades after his death (since he was a human, after all, and when humans die, they go to Hades.  Part of the reason for the doctrine, then, is that if he didn’t go, he wouldn’t have had all the human experiences); but he did not go there forever obviously (in this way he was *unlike* everyone else!) but as the son of God he went to bring his salvation to those who had died previously (who could not be saved by his death because it hadn’t happened yet.) I pointed out in the previous post that some theologians said that Christ went to Hades to preach to those who were there to give them the chance to repent (who wouldn’t want to get outta there??  Apparently some or lots?) but others claimed that he went to assert his raw power over his enemies to show who was Lord and King. These […]

• Afterlife
• Christian Apocrypha
• Early Christian Doctrine

December 18, 2022

Did Jesus Appear to 500 People After His Resurrection?

What do we make of Paul’s claim that 500 people at one time saw Jesus after the resurrection (in 1 Corinthians 15:3-5)?   I get this question every now and then — maybe five or six times just this year.  These days, among other things, I point 0ut something I hadn’t thought about in most of the years of my existence, that there was almost certainly no Christian group (meaning: a group of people who believed Jesus was raised from the dead) of that size in Paul’s day anywhere in the world!  (I discuss the numbers of Christians at different time periods in antiquity in my book The Triumph of Christianity.)  So on that level alone it seems highly implausible. But jut now looking through old posts from many years ago, I see I was asked the question and dealt with it in a different way.  I’d forgotten all about it, but see now that I give a bit of analysis that tries to unpack Paul’s claims.  Here’s the Q and the A: ****************************** QUESTION on […]

• Paul and His Letters
• Reader’s Questions

Tags: Paul, resurrection, resurrection appearances

December 20, 2022

Are You Interested in an End-of-the-Year Donation Opportunity? Blog Challenge Grants!!

Many of you are now thinking about your end-of-the-year giving plans.  Here’s an option I would like to ask you to consider. The Blog has received two challenge grants that between them total $25,000.  That is to say, to meet the challenge, we need to raise $25,000 ourselves.  When/if we do so: whammo – that’s $50k. The funds must come in, or be pledged, by December 31.  For us to meet the goal we will need lots of small donations (a dollar counts!), a number of good-sized donations (pick an amount), and several very sizeable donations. One of the reasons I’m *especially* keen on this opportunity is this.  As of now we have distributed $425,000 to our charities THIS YEAR.  That is by far the best we have ever done.  Last year was our record year, with a total for the year of $340,000.  But now we are close to a ratherremarkable milestone:  $500,000 in one year.   Them’s newsworthy numbers.  I’d LOVE to be able to do it.  And oh boy would our charities love […]

• Public Forum

December 9, 2022

Did Jesus Actually Come from Nazareth?

When you ask most anyone where Jesus came from, they will say he was born in Bethlehem.   The reason is not hard to find: the only references to Jesus’ birth in the New Testament squarely place his birth in Bethlehem.  There are, as many of you know, only two passages of the New Testament that narrate the events surrounding Jesus’ birth: Matthew 1-2 and Luke 1-2.  And they both agree in placing it in Bethlehem.  (Neither of the other Gospels says anything about it, nor do any of the other 23 books of the New Testament.) And yet there are compelling reasons for questioning that view, so that a large number of critical scholars – even prominent Roman Catholic scholars – think that it is more likely that Jesus was born in Nazareth.   Let me explain why. The first thing to stress is that  all four Gospels – including Matthew and Luke – agree that Jesus came from Nazareth.  That is to say, Nazareth (not Bethlehem) was his hometown.  In my view, that tradition is […]

• Canonical Gospels
• Historical Jesus

December 21, 2022

Instead of “From Nazareth” was Jesus a “Nazarite”??

In my previous post I showed why Jesus almost certainly came from the small village of Nazareth.  There have been some writers (OK, mythicists who don’t believe there ever *was* a historical Jesus), who have argued that Jesus could not have come from Nazareth since the place did not exist.  I dealt with this problem in several posts back in April of this year (check the archives for that month). Here, though, I want to address a related issue — the claim that the early Christians who started saying Jesus was from Nazareth actually just made a *mistake*.  They misunderstood that when some believers in Jesus called him a Nazirite — someone who had taken a Nazirite vow.   Nazirite vows come from the Hebrew Bible (Numbers 6): an Israelite who wanted to be particularly holy for a period of his life would take the vow, which would include not consuming grape products (think: wine!), not touching corpses (because of ritual defilement), and not cutting their hair (think Samson). Jesus was said — according to this […]

• Historical Jesus

December 22, 2022

O Little Town of Nazareth?

On several occasions on the blog I have discussed the similarities and differences between the accounts of Jesus’ birth in Matthew and Luke (Matthew 1-2 and Luke 1-2), most recently, I think, two years ago at this time (check out the archives for December 2020).  I won’t go over all that turf again just now, but I do want to hit several of the key points because I think the *discrepancies* between the two accounts that appear irreconcilable tell us something significant about the birth of Jesus.  I think they help show that he was actually born in Nazareth. Both accounts go to great lengths to show how Jesus could be born in *Bethlehem* when everyone in fact knew that he *came* from Nazareth. It is a particular problem for Matthew, because he points out that Jesus fulfilled the prophecy of Micah 5:2 , that a great ruler (the Messiah) would come from Bethlehem (Matthew 5:2).  If you read the account carefully, you’ll see that Matthew explains it by indicating that Joseph and Mary were […]

• Canonical Gospels
• Historical Jesus

December 24, 2022

Just Follow That Star!

In the previous post I commented that this idea of trying to follow a star to get anywhere (say, Bethlehem) would lead to problems.  Some years ago I had pointed out that trying to do that would send them around in circles:  since the earth is not “fixed” — it rotates and is in orbit around the sun — stars are never in the same place in the sky, so “following” one would take you all over the place. After posting on that, I found a hilarious illustration of what would happen if the wisemen followed a celestial body to find Jesus. I have borrowed this (no permission required, only acknowledgment) from here: http://what-if.xkcd.com/25/ Acknowledgement is here: http://xkcd.com/license.html ****************************** Three Wise Men The story of the three wise men got me wondering: What if you did walk towards a star at a fixed speed? What path would you trace on the Earth? Does it converge to a fixed cycle? —N. Murdoch If the wise men leave Jerusalem and walk toward the star Sirius, day and […]

• Canonical Gospels
• Reflections and Ruminations

Tags: Christmas Star, Wise Men

December 27, 2022

Christmas Reflections 2022 (from ten years on)

Ten years ago I posted a Christmas reflection that I just now reread and think encapsulates some of my deepest feelings about the season still.   This is what I said and say: ****************************** So, we have managed to make our way to another Christmas.  I hope all of you – whether fundamentalist, liberal Christian, seeker, Jew, Muslim, agnostic, atheist, or none of the above – are having a very nice, relaxing, rejuvenating, and fulfilling holiday. In the opening chapter of my book God’s Problem, I talked about going to church on Christmas Eve in 2006 with my wife Sarah and brother-in-law Simon, in Saffron-Walden, a market town in England where Simon lives, not far from Cambridge.  It was a somber but moving Christmas Eve service, and yet one that had the opposite of the intended effect on me.  It made me realize just how estranged I was from the Christian faith, from the notion that with Christ God entered into the world and took its sufferings upon himself.  I just didn’t see it, and it […]

• Reflections and Ruminations

December 25, 2022

An Unusually Significant Reference Work: The Encyclopedia of Ancient History

These past few weeks I’ve been reading up on various issues connected with the Ancient Near East (not my long suit) and have had occasion to make reference to a fantastic reference tool that everyone should know about but (other than scholars of antiquity)  hardly anyone does: The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Ancient History.  I posted on it nine years ago and have now realized it would be useful to do so again.  So, for an end of the year special, here it is!  (I’ve made a crucial addition in bold!) ****************************** I’m pleased to be able to announce (and only a month after the fact  — this was 9 years ago) that after years of labor, the thirteen-volume Encyclopedia of Ancient History, ed. by Roger Bagnall, Kai Bodersen, Craige Champion, Andrew Erskine, and Sabine Hueber has now appeared, published by Wiley-Blackwell.   It’s not exactly an affordable reference tool for everyone’s library.    The list price is $1995.00!  But you can save $354 on Amazon, if you’re loaded and looking for the most authoritative and up-to-date reference […]

• Book Discussions

January 3, 2023