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January 25, 2023
Anti-Jewish Alterations of the New Testament Writings?
In my previous post I pointed out that scribes sometimes changed the manuscripts of the New Testament in order to make them more theologically “orthodox,” that is, more in line with theological views of (most of) the scribes who were copying the texts in the second and third centuries. Five points I would like to emphasize about that phenomenon (if you want a fuller analysis, this is the topic of my study, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effects of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament). It would be a very big mistake to think that this was the main reason scribes changed their texts (as I’ve said my entire life, even if many people haven’t noticed!) These changes were never done consistently or throughly, at least in any of our surviving manuscripts, and that suggests it was an ad hoc affair, happening now and then as a scribe decided to modify a passage. So far as we can tell it was never done on orders from on high. That is, […]
February 8, 2023
An Intriguing Anti-Jewish Variant: Did Jesus Pray “Father forgive them”?
In my previous post I pointed out that scribes appear to have changed their texts of the New Testament in ways that reflected the rising anti-Jewish sentiment of the early Christian centuries. For me, by a wide margin, the most intriguing example of this is the prayer Jesus makes from the cross in Luke’s Gospel (and nowhere else in the New Testament) “Father forgive them, for they don’t know what they’re doing.” I wrote about this passage in an article many years ago that I called “The Text of the Gospels at the End of the Second Century,” which was reprinted in a collection of my more scholarly essays on textual criticism called Studies in the Textual Criticism of the New Testament (Brill, 2006; the paper was originally written for a conference in 1993) (not that I’m dating myself…) The paper was written for fellow scholars, but I’ve decided to go ahead and include it here verbatim. BUT, I have added several explanatory comments in [brackets] for technical terms and ideas that are not the […]
February 9, 2023
How Theologians and Historians Approach the Same Bible Differently. Guest Post by Daniel Kohanski
I am very pleased to announce that a scholar of religion who is also a log-term blog member, Dan Kohanski, has just published an intriguing book of direct relevance to what we do here on the blog (A God of Our Invention: How Religion Shaped the Western World). When I got the book I realized it would be great to have Dan do a couple of guest posts on the blog to share some of the views he develops in it. He agreed, and here is the first of three of his posts. Feel free to comment and ask questions! ****************************** (This essay is adapted from my just-published book, A God of Our Invention: How Religion Shaped the Western World, Apocryphile Press, 2023; https://apocryphilepress.com/book/a-god-of-our-invention-how-religion-shaped-the-western-world/ . Support your local independent bookstore and order using the “Buy paperback from Bookshop” link on that webpage.) There are several ways one can approach the Bible (including ignoring it), but I want to look here at two most of the most common ways: that of the theologian, and that of […]
February 11, 2023
Can We Know Anything About Judas Iscariot?
I get asked about Judas Iscariot far more than any of the other disciples, even the ones who are completely central to Jesus’ life and ministry (Peter, James, and John). I guess that’s because he is seen as, ultimately, more crucial to the story of Jesus. The betrayer. Without him, no arrest, trial, and crucifixion. Or at least, a completely different scenario for the death of the Son of God. This week, when scrounging around looking for something else, I came across this paper I delivered at a conference years ago. I thought it might be of interest to blog members. This will take three posts. (The paper was written for scholars, so I’ll put any necessary explanatory notes in italics) ****************************** In recent years, more has been written and less known about Judas Iscariot than about any of Jesus’ followers, with the outstanding exception of his wife and lover, the founder of the Merovingian Dynasty. (That was a little joke about people who take Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code seriously about what he says about […]
February 12, 2023
Judas Iscariot: What We Can Say With Relative Certainty. (I think…)
What then can we say with relative certainty about Judas called Iscariot? I think the following five points just about cover it: He did exist. This has been doubted in some circles and by some scholars, of course, especially among those who have wanted to point out the etymological similarity between his name, Judas, and the word Jew, and have argued, on this and related grounds, that Judas was a creation of the early church who wanted to pin the blame of Jesus’ death on the Jewish people. I think this is an attractive view, and one that I personally would like very much to be true, but I don’t see how it can be. Judas figures too prominently in too many layers of our traditions to be a later fabrication. I give all the data in my book on Judas, but here let me just say that there is unique and shared material about Judas in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John – so that his existence passes the criterion of Multiple Attestation with flying […]
February 14, 2023
What Did Judas Betray, and Why Did He Do It?
In my previous post I indicated that there are several things we can say with relative certainly about the historical Judas Iscariot (and indicated why I think we can be pretty sure about all of them): he really existed, he was one of Jesus’ twelve disciples, he was therefore an apocalyptic Jew from Palestine, and he really did hand Jesus over to the authorities to be arrested. But what is it exactly that Judas did that led to Jesus’ arrest, and why did he do it? Here we move from the grounds of relative historical certainty to issues of probability and speculation. The question of Judas’s motives for his act has intrigued Christians from the time before our earliest sources and continues to intrigue scholars today. The reality is that any discussion of motive is almost entirely speculative. If you can’t accurately describe my motives in writing this particular blog thread the way I have – and I can assure you, you don’t know my motives (and even if I *told* you, you couldn’t be […]
February 15, 2023
Is Christianity a Cult of the Dead? Guest Post by Kyle Smith, PhD
Now here’s an intriguing topic I bet you’ve never thought about. Can you (should we?) consider early Christianity — and in fact Christianity as a whole, as a “cult of the dead”? Kyle Smith is an associate professor and director of the History of Religions program in the Department of Historical Studies at the University of Toronto (See: Kyle Smith | Department of Historical Studies (utoronto.ca). I have known Kyle for many years, since he was a PhD student in early Chrsitianity at Duke. Since then he has become a well-known scholar of Christianity in late antiquity, who already now at a relatively young age (compared to us geezers) has published six books. (Not sure if you know this, but many, many senior scholars publish only two or three for their entire careers.) Five of them are hard-hitting scholarship. His most recent one is for a general audience, Cult of the Dead: A Brief History of Christianity (University of California Press, 2022). I think it’s unusually interesting. I thought it would be extremely interesting to […]
February 16, 2023
My New Online Course on the Gospel of Mark!
In case you haven’t heard, I will be doing a live, eight-lecture online course on the Gospel of Mark on Feb. 18-19. The course is not connected with the blog — it is part of my separate venture for a series I’m publishing called How Scholars Read the Bible. But I mention here because some of you may be interested. Even if you can’t make the live sessions and Q&A, you can purchase the course to watch at your leisure. You can learn about it here: bartehrman.com/mark The course will consist of four lectures and Q&A each day. The lectures will be 45 minutes each, so a bit longer with more substance than the other courses I’ve done. I’m completely pumped about this course. Mark is my favorite Gospel and, in fact, probably my favorite book of the Bible. It is a book that is widely misunderstood, in part because casual readers often think of it as a Readers Digest version of Matthew and Luke, a kind of no-frills, nuts-and-bolts account of Jesus’ life without […]
February 5, 2023
Do You Want to Discuss the Movie Tár with World-Renowned Conductor Gisele Ben-Dor? Blog Fundraiser for Earthquake Victims in Turkey/Syria
We are all devastated by the ongoing reports of casualties from the earthquake in Turkey and Syria. I would like to have a blog fundraiser for funds for Doctors without Borders, one of our regular charities, who is actively on the ground dealing with the crisis. This unusually special event will be February 22, 7:30-9:00 pm. It will be something completely different from what we normally do on the blog. The idea came about by the chance occurrence of two events. I saw the movie Tár (with Cate Blanchette) when it came out, and I was blown away by it (which rarely happens). As many of you know, it is a powerful portrayal of a female conductor who abuses her power and suffers the consequences. It is a riveting script, with fantastic acting, addressing massively important issues with twists and terrific nuance. I wanted to know, among other things, how “good” it was and “true to life” and thought to ask someone who would be able to talk about it with authority . Some of […]
February 10, 2023
How Does Something “Mean”
One morning recently, at the crack of dawn, I was walking my dog when I saw my neighbor Sally walk across the street and pick up the newspaper from my neighbor Jane’s driveway, and head back to her house. I thought WHOA! Sally is stealing Jane’s paper! I bet her own paper didn’t get delivered this morning! Interesting and a bit amusing. But Sally she stopped in her own driveway and picked up her (identical) paper, and I suddenly realized, OH! Jane must be gone for a few days and Sally is picking up her paper so it won’t be obvious she’s away. Sally wasn’t doing something slightly nasty but something very neighborly. And it made me think how the *context* of an action is completely determinative of its meaning. The very same action, in a different context, means something different and can have, in fact, precisely the opposite moral worth. Naturally, I started thinking about other actions along these lines. ‘Cause that’s the kind of thing I do when I walk my dog. What […]
February 19, 2023
Why Would Evolving Beliefs about Sin Lead to the Idea of an Afterlife? Guest Post by Daniel Kohanski
Last Week I published the first of three guest posts by blog member Daniel Kohanski, based on a book that he recently published that will be of interest to many blog readers. Here now is the second post. ****************************** Apocryphile Press has just published my latest book, A God of Our Invention: How Religion Shaped the Western World (https://apocryphilepress.com/book/a-god-of-our-invention-how-religion-shaped-the-western-world/). The book first examines how the western world’s idea of God developed, from the Israelite worship of many gods, Yahweh included, through the first centuries of Christianity. It then looks at how that idea of God has impacted the way we deal with sex, war, and death, and how the belief that Jesus is coming back has interfered with our ability to handle crises. Here is an edited excerpt from the first part of the book, exploring how the Jews first came to believe in judgment after death. (I’ve relied on some of Bart’s books, and other scholars, for some of this material, but omitted the references for space reasons.) ————————————————————— In the days of […]
February 25, 2023
Wait, Was Jesus Married? Guest Post by Kyle Smith
This is now the second guest post by Kyle Smith, scholar of early Christianity, on a hot topic related to his recently published book. Kyle is Associate Professor and Director of the History of Religions Program at the University of Toronto. An award-winning teacher, he is the author or coauthor of five books about Christian saints and martyrs, including Cult of the Dead: A Brief History of Christianity (University of California Press, 2022). You can find him on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and the Peloton @kylesmithTO. ****************************** Few characterizations of Jesus’s life have spurred as much intrigue (and outrage) as the idea that he might’ve been married. In 2012, before it was discredited as a forgery, a scrap of papyrus inscribed with a few lines of Coptic set off a media furor when reports emerged that it quoted Jesus as saying, “My wife …” Conveniently, the rest was cut off. Despite the abiding popularity of books like The Da Vinci Code, which might lead one to think otherwise, there is no scholarly debate over whether Jesus […]
February 21, 2023
Is Suffering a “Problem” for Believers?
This past week I had a long talk with one of my bright undergraduates, a first-year student who had been raised in a Christian context but had come to have serious doubts driven in large part by the difficulty she had understanding how there could be suffering in a world controlled by an all-knowing and all-powerful God. I naturally resonated with the question, since this is why I myself left the Christian faith. I get asked about that transition a lot, and it’s been five or six years since I’ve discussed it at any length on the blog. So I thought I might return to it. The one and only time I”ve talked about it at length is in my book God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer our Most Important Question – Why We Suffer (Oxford University Press, 2008). Here is how I discuss it there, slightly edited. (This will take several posts) ******************************* I think I know when suffering started to become a “problem” for me. It was while I was still […]
February 22, 2023
Seeing the Problem of Suffering as a PROBLEM
In my previous post I began to talk about how thinkers in the Jewish and Christian traditions have wrestled with the problem of suffering. I indicated that the technical term for this “problem” is “theodicy,” and it is often said to involve the status of three assertions which all are typically thought to be true by those in these two religions, but if true appear to contradict one another. The assertions are these: God is all-powerful. God is all-loving. There is suffering. How can all three be true at once? If God is all powerful, then he is able to do whatever he wants (and can therefore remove suffering). If he is all loving, then he obviously wants the best for people (and therefore does not want them to suffer). And yet people suffer. How can that be explained? As I pointed out some thinkers have tried to deny one or the other of the assertions: either God is not actually all powerful, or he is not all loving, or there is no suffering. But […]
February 23, 2023
Do We Suffer Because We Have “Free Will”?
In my previous posts I discussed a class I once taught at Rutgers University on how the various biblical authors deal with the problem of suffering – the problem of how there can be such horrible suffering in a world that is said to be controlled by an all-loving and all-powerful God (who therefore wants the best for people and is able to provide it). Many of my students, as I pointed out, think that there’s an easy answer: we suffer because of “free will.” If we weren’t free to love and hate, to do good and do harm, we would just be robots or computers, not humans. If God wanted to create humans, as opposed to machines, necessarily we have to be free to hurt others. And many people do so, often in horrendous ways. Does that solve the problem? Naturally we dealt with that issue in my class. Here is how I discussed those conversations in my book on suffering, God’s Problem: How The Bible Fails to Answer our Most Important Question – […]
February 26, 2023
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February 14, 2023
Did Mark Write Mark? What the Apostolic Fathers Say
Did Mark write Mark? A couple of weeks ago I did an eight-lecture course on the Gospel of Mark for my separate (unrelated to the blog) venture, a series of courses on “How Historians Read the Bible” (the courses are available on my website: www.bartehrman.com). It was a blast. One of the things I loved about doing it was that I was able to read and reread scholarship on Mark and I learned some things I had long wondered about, and re-learned other things that I used to know. One of the things I had to think seriously about for the first time in some years was the question of why church fathers in the second century (but when?) began claiming that our second Gospel was written by John Mark, allegedly a secretary for the apostle Peter. That took me straight back to the question of the reliability of an early Christian writer named Papias (writing around 120 or 130 CE?). Papias gets used all the time as proof that Mark wrote Mark. Conservative Christian […]
March 1, 2023
Who Wrote the Gospels? Our Earliest (Apparent) Reference
I have begun to discuss the evidence provided by the early church father Papias that Mark was actually written by Mark. He appears to be the first source to say so. Does he? And if so, is he right? Here’s how I begin to discuss these matters in my book Jesus Before the Gospels (edited a bit here). ****************************** Papias is often taken as evidence that at least two of the Gospels, Matthew and Mark, were called by those names already several decades after they were in circulation. Papias was a Christian author who is normally thought to have been writing around 120 or 130 CE. His major work was a five-volume discussion of the teachings of Jesus, called Exposition of the Sayings of the Lord. [1] It is much to be regretted that we no longer have this book. We don’t know exactly why later scribes chose not to copy it, but it is commonly thought that the book was either uninspiring, naïve, or theologically questionable. Later church fathers who talk about Papias and […]
March 2, 2023
Is the Gospel of Mark in Papias Our Gospel of Mark?
Can we trust a source such as Papias on the question of whether our Gospel of Matthew was written by the disciple Matthew and that our Gospel of Mark was written by Mark, the companion of the disciple Peter? It is interesting that Papias tells a story that is recorded in our Matthew but tells it so completely differently that it appears he doesn’t know Matthew’s version. And so when he says Matthew wrote Matthew, is he referring to *our* Matthew, or to some other book? (Recall, the Gospel he refers to is a collection of Jesus’ sayings in Hebrew; the Gospel of Matthew that *we* have is a narrative, not a collection of sayings, and was written in Greek.) If he *is* referring to our Matthew, why doesn’t he see it as an authoritative account? Here’s the conflicting story. It involves the death of Judas. And it’s quite a story! Here is my translation of it from my edition, The Apostolic Fathers (Loeb Classical Library, vol. 1; 2004). But Judas went about in this […]
March 4, 2023