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The Life of Brian and the Historical Jesus
A couple of weeks ago we had a very fun Movie Club as a fundraiser for the blog, trying to raise funds to cover our operating expenses, since all the membership fees and any regular donations that come in go directly to our charities — but we still have to pay our bills! This one was on the Life of Brian. Have you seen it? If not, you should. If you’ve seen it ten times, you should see it eleven. During our discussion of the film I pointed out that there was a conference in London some years ago to celebrate the 35th anniversary of its release — a group of academics specializing in New Testament and/or ancient Judaism reading serious papers (often with some humor) about the relevance of their field for the film, and vice versa. Seriously. (John Cleese came to the conference and thought the whole thing was outrageously funny and great fun — a group of academics discussing a film he and his Monty Python buds had come up with. He […]
Tags: historical jesus, Life of Brian
July 8, 2023
More on the Life of Brian and the Historical Jesus
This is second of three installments of the paper I read at the Life of Brian and the Historical Jesus conference. In this portion I deal with an issue that I have been spending a lot of time reading and thinking about over the years: the value of eyewitness testimony for establishing what really happened in the past. The reflections here are inspired by the first episode of Brian’s adulthood in the film, where he is present, at a distance, at Jesus’ famous Sermon on the Mount, and the people around Brian cannot make out exactly what Jesus is saying since they are so far away from him. Rather than “Blessed are the Peacemakers,” Jesus is thought to have said “Blessed are the Cheesemakers”; and it was the Greek, not the meek, who will inherit the earth. And so it goes. It’s the sort of scene that is both funny and insightful — what *was* it like to hear a public speaker back in the days before there were microphones??? To deal with […]
Tags: historical jesus, Life of Brian
July 9, 2023
The Life of Brian and Jesus: Was Jesus Really Buried on the Day of the Crucifixion?
Here is the third and final section of the paper that I read at the Life of Brian conference. The entire paper tried to argue that parody can be an effective historical method. By providing a caricature of a narrative or an alleged historical event, the film was able to highlight some very important historical realia that otherwise are too easy to miss, or that have not been given enough prominence by biblical scholars and historians. This third part of my paper is the really controversial one (although part 2 raised some concerns as well!). Here is where I argue that Jesus was not given a decent burial, and I use the film to explain why. I should say that in a few days I am going to be devoting a sustained thread to just this issue, of why I think the story of Joseph of Arimathea in the NT is legendary, that Jesus was almost certainly not given a decent burial on the day of his crucifixion. My thread will be a response […]
Tags: historical jesus, Life of Brian
July 11, 2023
Our Inner Herod. Guest Post by Glenn Siepert
Here is a second post from blog member and blog volunteer Glenn Siepert. Lucky us, it includes an extract from his new book. Enjoy! ****************************** Our Inner Herod In my last post I shared the background of my book, Emerging From the Rubble and over the next couple of posts I want to share some excerpts with you so as to give you a taste of what to expect in the book. There are 30 chapters that explore 30 stories from Matthew’s Gospel and each chapter ends with a couple of reflection questions to get you thinking about how the story might encourage you or challenge you as you face your own modern day Temple collapse. Here’s chapter 4 of the book, “Our Inner Herod” – a reflection on Matthew 2:1-12. — Dis-Star Herod was pretty ticked off, right? He was a man of unbelievable power and (in his mind) no one was ever going to replace him. He was the man. He was the myth. He was the legend. … King Herod the Great, the […]
July 12, 2023
The Narrow Road to … Hell? Guest Post by Glenn Siepert
A final guest post from Glenn Siepert, on his recent book! ****************************** Here’s my last post about my book, “Emerging From the Rubble” – a reflection on Matthew 7:13-14. If you’ve read the posts, thank you. As you can imagine, this book means the world to me. And if you find yourself navigating through your own loss and demolished Temple, my hope is that it can become a friend to you. Whether you believe in God or not or consider yourself a Christian or not … I don’t think it really matters because I think that whether it’s God or the Universe or our own inner knowing – I think that small inner voice can speak to us through these stories and leave us challenged, encouraged, and full of ideas about how to move forward. May it be so. — A Threat? A while back someone told me that I was walking down the wide road to hell. I don’t remember why or the context of the comment … Was it the podcast episodes about […]
July 16, 2023
Radiocarbon Dating of the Qur’an. Has It Solved the Problem? Guest Post by Stephen Shoemaker
This is an unusually important post on how to solve the problem of the date of the Qur’an, by my colleague Stephen Shoemaker, connected with his earlier scintillating discussion based on his recent book Creating the Qur’an, which you can check out here: Amazon.com: Creating the Qur’an: A Historical-Critical Study eBook : Shoemaker, Stephen J.: Books The question is: can’t you just do a scientific dating of the Qur’an manuscripts and quickly solve the question: when were they produced? The answer may surprise you. It enlightened *me* ****************************** Radiocarbon Dating and the Origins of the Qur’an: The Perils of Scientism and Internet Sensationalism Bart invited me to make another post or two about studying the origins of the Qur’an from a historical-critical perspective, and right off the bat I knew that I needed to write something about attempts to radiocarbon date early Qur’anic manuscripts. It turns out that over the last ten years this topic has become the 800-pound gorilla in the room (to mix metaphors), and much like an actual 800-pound gorilla in […]
July 15, 2023
Questions about Dating the Gospels
How do we know when the Gospels were written? I have recently received two questions about this matter on the blog (from two different people, within minutes of each other!); I answered the questions as usual in the Comment section, but thought the issues were important enough to present as a post as well, both the questions/comments and my responses (which I’ve expanded a bit here). ****************************** QUESTION: With all this discussion of the early non-canonical gospels, I need some clarification. By reading multiple scholars, I think I am confused. As far as the canonical gospels, I had thought that the earliest copies were from the late second and early third century. By copies I mean those that are recognizable as Mark, Matthew, Luke and John. I thought that scholars had dated them by indirect means to the last quarter of the first century. How are the canonical gospels dated in this manner as most scholars claim? Do they have fragments with carbon dates from first century CE? Are there references by independent sources […]
July 13, 2023
Blog Dinner in London, Tuesday July 25. Interested?
I am in London for the summer and would like to do another small dinner with active blog members on Tuesday, July 25, 2023. Possibly a pint in advance. This time it will be on my home-away-from-home turf, Wimbledon, specifics TBD.
July 8, 2023
Male Superiority in Antiquity
Why did ancient Greeks and Romans think that “men” were inherently superior to “women”? Many people (and entire cultures) think that still today, of course, but for now I ain’t goin’ there. I’m interested in understanding this understanding in the ancient world out of which Christianity grew, on the assumption that modern ideas have been handed down to us over the centuries so that most people simply think their views are “common sense,” which, I suppose, they often are, since they are the sense commonly held. They often think, as a consequence, that they are therefore “naturally right,” and with that I heartily disagree. A majority opinion is not necessarily right or true. The fact that for most of western history a majority of people thought the world came into existence just some thousands of years ago and would last 6000 years does not mean the view was right. Just that it was widely held. Both what is actually “true” and what is truly “natural” is not established by a show of hands. In any […]
July 19, 2023
Announcing a NEW (Free!) Course: Why I Am Not A Christian
I am happy to announce that I will be doing a new course, Why I Am Not a Christian: How Leaving the Faith Led to a Life of More Meaning and Purpose. I explain it all below, but as spoilers: it is July 23, it will involve four talks and a Q&A, and it is free. You can sign up for it at bartehrman.com/lifeafterfaith The course will be unlike any other I have given in any context. It will indeed cover major issues involving the New Testament, early Christianity, and the formation of the Christian religion. But it will also be deeply personal and autobiographical. I became a scholar because of my Christian faith; then my Christian faith changed because of my scholarship. My “quest for truth” led me to evangelical Christianity; and then – as I grew, matured, learned, and reflected – it led me to away from the Christian faith. In this course of lectures I explain how it all happened and discuss what the results were – for my scholarship, my understanding […]
July 10, 2023
More on Love: Why Were Greek Men Especially Attracted to Prepubescent Boys?
What is it with Greek pederasty? How could this be a thing, the widely accepted practice in classical Athens (at least) of an adult man taking an adolescent boy under his wing and into his bed, providing an education into the culture, social world, and politics of the city in exchange for sexual favors? I’ve given two posts on it to this point, and in this one I want to reflect on what it was all about – at least what one particular of it was all about. My question: Why were adolescent boys seen as particularly beautiful – rapturous – and desirable sex partners, apparently far more then women, even among men who were heterosexually active, including with their wives ? Some of us today (who know a lot of teenagers) just don’t see the attraction. But reading the ancient texts, it’s pretty clear that at least among the Athenian social elites, it was not even much debated: Of *course* boys are greatly to be (especially) desired, sexually. Not just to one older fellow […]
July 18, 2023
Is the USA the Antichrist of the Book of Revelation? Slavic Views of the Apocalypse. Guest Post by Mikhail Abakumov
A few months ago I was invited to do a remote interview with a podcaster from Ukraine, Mikhail Abakumov, who has emigrated to Poland because of the war. Mikhail is a Christian scholar, working with Ukranian refugees, and writing a dissertation on the famous German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, famous for being involved with, and eventually executed for, an assassination plot against Hitler. Bonhoeffer has been an inspiration to many Christian seminarians, pastors, theologians, and thinkers at large ever since. During my interview with Mikhail I learned something that blew my mind. I knew full well that many American fundamentalists had long identified the Soviet Union, and then Russia (or one of its leaders) as the “Antichrist” (the “evil empire”); I had no idea that conservative Slavic Christians returned the favor and thought the same of the USA. Particularly today. That in fact the war in Ukraine was a fulfillment of Scriptural prophecies, especially the book of Revelation, which showed how the conflict would end and what world order would emerge from its ashes. I asked […]
July 20, 2023
Back to Whether Jesus Was Really Given a Decent Burial
Was Jesus actually given a decent burial the afternoon he was crucified? Almost every Christian in the known universe, and almost all New Testament scholars, don’t ask the question and if they do they don’t ask it seriously: of *course* he was. Just read the Gospels! Why wouldn’t he be? For years now I’ve taken a different stand, as pointed out in my recent post on Monty Python’s Life of Brian (see: The Life of Brian and Jesus: Was Jesus Really Buried on the Day of the Crucifixion? – The Bart Ehrman Blog) After that post, and for years before that, blog readers have asked for a fuller explanation of my views, and for my responses to scholarly rejections of it. Most everything I talk about on the blog comprises views held either by a majority of scholars or by a respectable minority. Not this one. So why do I find it convincing? My fullest discussion of the matter came not in a scholarly publication but here on the blog, nine years ago. I’ve decided […]
July 22, 2023
Literary Problems with the Gospel Accounts of Jesus’ Burial
Here is a section from my book How Jesus Became God (HarperOne, 2014) that deals with the question of whether Jesus was actually given a decent burial by Joseph of Arimathea. At this point of my discussion I am not looking into the question of whether it is plausible that Jesus would be buried on the day of his execution given what we know from other historical sources, about Roman practices, but at general problems with the reporting in the Gospels. ****************************** According to our earliest account, the Gospel of Mark, Jesus was buried by a previously unnamed and unknown figure, Joseph of Arimathea, “a respected member of the council” (Mark 15:43) – that is, a Jewish aristocrat who belonged to the Sanhedrin, which was the ruling body made up of “chief priests, elders, and scribes” (Mark 14:53). According to Mark 15:43, Joseph summoned up his courage and asked Pilate for Jesus’ body. When Pilate learned that Jesus was already dead, he granted Joseph his wish, and he took the body from cross, wrapped it […]
July 23, 2023
Did Romans Allow Decent Burials for Crucified Criminals?
In considering whether Jesus was buried on the day of his death, does it matter what Roman typical practices were? Or should these just be overlooked, not taken into consideration? In addition to the rather general considerations I have given in my previous post for calling into question the idea that Jesus received a decent burial by Joseph of Arimathea, there are three more specific reasons for doubting the tradition that Jesus received a decent burial at all, in a tomb that could later be recognized as emptied. Roman Practices of Crucifixion Sometimes Christian apologists argue that Jesus had to be taken off the cross before sunset on Friday, because the next day was Sabbath and it was against Jewish Law, or at least Jewish sensitivities, to allow a person to remain on the cross during the Sabbath. Unfortunately, the historical record suggests just the opposite. It was not Jews who killed Jesus, and so they had no say about when he would be taken down from the cross. Moreover, the Romans who […]
July 25, 2023
More Reasons for Thinking Jesus was Not Given a Decent Burial
So far in this thread I have been laying out the argument found in my book How Jesus Became God of why I do not think Jesus was given a decent burial by Joseph of Arimathea on the day he was crucified. This will be the last post on the question. After this the fun begins. My friend, New Testament scholar Craig Evans, laid out a detailed argument for why he thinks I am very wrong, as one of the essays in the response-book, How God Became Jesus. Starting in the next post, in a new thread of a number of response-to-the-response posts, I will respond to Craig’s arguments one-by-one, to show in turn why I don’t find his arguments at all convincing. In my post yesterday I talked about one specific reason for doubting the tradition of Jesus’ burial by Joseph of Arimathea. Now I give two more reasons. ****************************** Greek and Roman Practices of Using Common Graves for Criminals My second reason for doubting that Jesus received a decent burial is that – […]
July 26, 2023
Does It Even Matter If Jesus Was Given a Proper Burial?
Now that I have devoted a few posts to presenting my argument for why I think Jesus was probably not given a decent burial – the posts were portions of a chapter lifted from How Jesus Became God (HarperOne, 2014)– I am in a position to begin to respond to the counter-arguments of Craig Evans, my evangelical friend and naysayer, whose essay “Getting the Burial Traditions and Evidences Right” is widely seen – at least by people who have said anything to me about the matter – as the best contribution in the response book How God Became Jesus. In my replies to his arguments, I will call him “Craig,” hoping that this does not smack too much of over-familiarity. But, well, we’ve known each other for thirty years, have worked together on various film projects (documentaries that we have both in), and have had a number of cordial public debates. Referring to him as “Evans” might seem a bit contemptuous. And truth be told, I’m not at all contemptuous of his scholarship or of […]
July 27, 2023
Alleged “Proof” That Crucified Jews Were Allowed Decent Burials
Now that I have restated my views about the burial of Jesus by citing passages from How Jesus Became God (HarperOne, 2014) and emphasized one particular general point – that it is of utmost importance to remember why Romans crucified people, and in particular why they crucified those who were guilty of insurrection, the threat of insurrection, or high treason (a point that I cannot stress enough: Jesus was executed for calling himself the King of the Jews – a political charge of treason against the state) – I can now begin to summarize the counter-arguments that Craig Evans has made in his relatively long response, “Getting the Burial Traditions and Evidences Right.” Despite this title, and despite the respect I have for Craig as a scholar, I have to say that in my judgment he gets virtually all the evidence precisely wrong. He focuses his counter-argument on two of my main points: the Roman practices of crucifixion and the character of Pontius Pilate in particular. I will respond to all of his major claims – […]
July 30, 2023
Preparing for that “Final Trip” (outta here). What Do You Think?
On the questions of mortality and moving on…. A couple of weeks ago, as I was preparing for my recent course “Why I Am Not a Christian,” I was reminded of one of my favorite modern novels, The Sense of an Ending, by Julian Barnes, which won the Booker Prize in 2011. What a terrific book. Short but completely compelling. Beautifully written. Moving. Thought provoking. I can’t recommend it highly enough. I won’t give up the plot, but, well, it’s about life, death, getting older, memory, and remorse. Two lines really struck me. The first is spoken by one of the characters in a history class in school in his upper sixth (that’s the year English students prepare for university; it’s a lot more rigorous than our senior years in high school) (mine anyway; and I went to an unusually good high school!). When asked, at the end of the term, what history is (looking back at all they had studied), he responds: “History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of […]
August 2, 2023
Creating the Qu’ran: Where Did the Scripture of Islam Really Come From? Guest post by Stephen Shoemaker
Here now is the third and final post on the Qur’an by scholar of Early Islam and Ancient Christianity Stephen Shoemaker, Professor at the University of Oregon. Stephen is an internationally-known scholar and his first two posts are highly informed and have been controversial among some of our blog members–as one would expect for someone whose research leads to conclusions different from what everyone has always said and assumed to be true! In this post he addresses the question many of us have long had: when was the Qur’an actually produced and could the traditions it contains have been changed over the years before it was written? ****************************** Creating the Qur’an: The Formation of the Last Ancient Scripture Hi again. Welcome to my final post, and I’d like to thank Bart for the opportunity to engage this lively forum and also all of its members for reading and considering my thoughts. In my two previous posts, you will recall, I noted some significant problems with prevailing understandings of how the Qur’an as […]
August 8, 2023