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More Major Issues Confronting the Early Christians.
What were the major issues, concerns, and debates confronting the earliest Christians? My book After the New Testament: A Reader in Early Christianity (Oxford University Press, 2nd ed, 2015) addresses these issues. I’ve explained the book in my two previous posts. Here is my third, again giving an excerpt from the General Introduction, explaining the rubrics I used in the book to cover the vital topics of Christian Origins, chapter by chapter. At the end I provide a bibliography for further reading, books that cover the history of the period broadly and competently. ******************************
July 28, 2024
Did the Roman Government Become More “Moral” Once it Became Christian?
I’m still drafting away on my book on the difference Jesus’ ethics made on the moral conscience of the West, and one thing I’m ruminating on is whether Christian emperors were more ethically conscious (in a way moderns would recognize) than their pagan predecessors. Here’s a first draft of my discussion of the matter. ****************************** With the Christianization of the empire there were to be sure major beneficial effects on wider society and sometimes these came not from the actions of church leaders in providing material assistance to the poor, hungry, orphaned, widowed, homeless, elderly, and outcast, but on occasion from the imperial government itself. This started already with the first Christian emperor, Constantine, who converted to the faith in 312 CE. In some ways Constantine’s new religious commitments affected his interventions in social problems rampant throughout the empire. Infanticide had been practiced since time immemorial, especially in cases where an unwanted child was born to a family that simply could not afford it. In 315 CE Constantine passed legislation that applied to all the […]
July 30, 2024
Salvation, Love, and the Jewish Law in Paul. Are His Views Internally Coherent?
In my book on Christian ethics I’ll naturally be dealing with the views of Paul, which are more complicated that one might suspect. One of the things I’ll try to be showing is that his teachings on Christian “love” in some places seems to stand at odds with his teachings on salvation. I’ve drafted up this bit of the discussion, but it will take two posts to lay it out. Here’s the first.
July 31, 2024
Does Paul Have Contradictory Views of the Law, Love, and Salvation?
In my post yesterday I began talking about Paul’s understanding of salvation coming to gentiles without having to keep the Jewish law. Now I get to the real problem. Doesn’t Paul contradict his own views of the need to keep the law when he talks about the importance of love? Here’s a fairly rough draft of my current thoughts on the matter. ******************************
August 1, 2024
Ancient Ways of Interpreting Scripture
Did the earliest Christians interpret texts the way people do today? I’m not asking if they always had the same interpretation; I’m asking if their approach to and methods of interpretation were the same. It’s a surprising answer. In particular, the various ways texts got interpreted may not be expected. I deal with it in my book After the New Testament (2nd edition, Oxford University Press, 2014), the anthology of early Christian texts that I discussed on the blog a week or so ago. The book presents modern translations of Christian writings from right after the New Testament roughly up to the conversion of Constantine (so, the second and third centuries, 100-300 CE). I organized them according to topics and for each topic I gave an explanatory introduction, then gave a brief introduction for each of the writings themselves as they occurred. Here is the introduction for the section dealing with how early Christians interpreted the Bible.
August 3, 2024
Competing Interpretations of Scripture in the Early Church
Early Christians interpreted their sacred texts in a variety of ways, some of them a bit bizarre to many modern readers, as I pointed out in my previous post. Here I discuss two different views of the matter, one by a Gnostic Christian named Ptolemy and the other by the most famous opponent of the Gnostics, Irenaeus. Here are the Introductions to their discussions that I give in my book After the New Testament (2nd edition, Oxford University Press, 2014); after the introductions, in the book I give modern English translations of their discussions themselves, one translated from the Coptic and the other from Latin. If your interest is piqued in what they actually say, and in the dozens of other ancient Christian writings I provide in the book, check it out! ****************************** Ptolemy’s Letter to Flora One of the most famous disciples of (the Christian gnostic) Valentinus (see the Gospel of Truth) was Ptolemy, a renowned gnostic teacher who lived in Rome in the mid-second century. From Ptolemy’s own hand comes one of the […]
August 4, 2024
Women and Gender: Early Christianity in a Patriarchal World
Jesus and his earliest followers, including Paul, may have been unusually open to women playing an important role in the community of the faithful, but it was not long until women’s voices and activities came to be suppressed. It is interesting to see both how that happened, historically, and how some women found alternative ways to find expression for their faith. This is one of the topics I cover in my book After the New Testament (2nd edition; Oxford University Press, 2014). As I’ve said, in some ways it may be the most useful book I’ve published. It is an anthology of passages from major Christian writings, both proto-orthodox and “heretical” of the second and third centuries, organized thematically, in modern English translations, with introductions both to the themes themselves and to the individual writings. Here is the introduction to the section where I provide excerpts of early Christian writings on women and gender. ****************************** Women played significant roles in the early Christian movement, starting with ministry of Jesus himself. In Gospel traditions both early and […]
August 6, 2024
Interested in Textual Criticism? Probably My Most Useful (Edited) Book
Many people on the blog are interested in textual criticism, the field that examines our surviving manuscripts of the New Testament to figure out what the authors originally wrote and to see how and why their writings came to be changed by later scribes. One of the most important books I’ve published was one I didn’t write (!), an edited collection of essays by leading scholars in the world on various aspects of the topic. The book was for academics, but some of you might be interested in what it was all about. I was asked about it many years ago on the blog, and thought reposting the question and response would be a good way to introduce it here. QUESTION: Dr. Ehrman, in your first and second edition of The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research: Essays on the Status Quaestionis that you co-edited with Dr. Michael Holmes, what was your role in editing, especially since some articles were beyond your admitted expertise?
August 7, 2024
Why I Wrote Misquoting Jesus
My book Misquoting Jesus was the biggest surprise of my career. No one thought (as colleague scholars frequently told me, somewhat emphatically, in advance) that a book like this would go *anywhere*. A discussion of changes made by scribes while copying the manuscripts of the New Testament? What? Even New Testament experts were and are by and large simply uninterested in the field, considering it a technical, detailed, and incredibly dull enterprise. My friends in graduate school thought i was an odd-duck for wanting even to study the matter, let alone devote a lot of my scholarship to it. And to think about writing a book for non-scholars about it? Yikes.
August 8, 2024
Misquoting Jesus and My Fall From Fundamentalism
Is the Bible the inerrant Word of God or a very human book with all the problems that normally entails? For me, realizing that we don’t have the Bible in its original form was important to my thinking as I moved away believing the Bible had come straight to us from God. I’ve been talking about all this as background to my book Misquoting Jesus (Harper, 2005). In the following excerpt I begin to explain the wide-ranging implications of my new way for understanding the New Testament. My previous post ended with my realization, as stated in my book, that “there are more variations in the New Testament than there are words in the New Testament.” Lots and lots of conservative Christian scholars have maligned me putting it this way, even though they know it’s true. They just think it’s too radical. Little do they know (until I inform them) that the phrase came to me from the textual scholar they adore above all others, my mentor Bruce Metzger, who used to say it all […]
August 11, 2024
How Scholarship Changed My Life
I continue now with the backstory of why I wrote my book Misquoting Jesus; up to this point I’ve explained how I became an evangelical Christian and, after high school, made a beeline for Moody Bible Institute and became interested in understanding how we got the New Testament – not in the original writings, which we no longer have, but only in later copies which have lots of mistakes in them. I continue now from there, with another excerpt the Introduction of my book Misquoting Jesus (Harper, 2005) ****************************** At the end of my three years at Moody (it was a three-year diploma) I had done well in my courses and was more serious than ever about becoming a Christian scholar. My idea at the time was that there were plenty of highly educated scholars among the evangelical Christians, but there were not many evangelicals among the (secular) highly educated scholars. And so I wanted to become an evangelical “voice,” as it were, in secular circles, by getting degrees that would allow me to teach […]
August 10, 2024
How I Almost Published “Lost in Transmission”
I can’t end my discussion of my book Misquoting Jesus without telling one of my favorite publishing stories. OK … without *repeating* it. I’ve given it on the blog before, but it’s been some years. It was originally a response to a question about how trade books get their titles, and my explanation that “Misquoting Jesus” was NOT the title I wanted. ****************************** QUESTION: Dr, Ehrman, can you explain a little how you go about choosing a title for your trade books? Is it a collaborative effort between you and your agent or publisher? Can it be a difficult process where the title can change as the book progresses? And if so,, can you give just a couple examples when you had decided on a title (could you name the original title ) and changed the title to the book that finally appeared at our local book store ? RESPONSE: In earlier posts I discussed the strategies behind giving a title to a scholarly book. When it comes to trade books, written for popular […]
August 13, 2024
The Reliability of Eyewitnesses and Abraham Lincoln’s Watch
A post from 2012 that I had completely forgotten! ****************************** A fascinating news item has appeared in the Smithsonian Magazine. At first it may not be obvious how it connects to Christianity in Antiquity. But I think it does. It is about a watch owned by Abraham Lincoln. Here is the link to the full story, with a photo: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/Lincolns-Pocket-Watch-Reveals-Long-Hidden-Message.html So the deal is this, as described in the article:
August 14, 2024
My Edition of the Apostolic Fathers
Since I often get asked about topics I’ve written about, I have been doing a long thread discussing the various books I’ve published. For the next several posts I’ll talk about my edition of the “Apostolic Fathers Volume 1” and “Apostolic Fathers Volume 2” for the Loeb Classical Library (Harvard University Press, 2003). The “Loeb” series provide bi-lingual editions of ancient Greek and Latin writings. “Bi-lingual” means that the original (Greek or Latin) text of the writing is on one side of the page with an English translation on the other side. These are designed for students and scholars who know the ancient languages at least to some extent, as a way of helping them study the texts even if their knowledge of the languages is not as good as it could be (when is it ever?). So these volumes are probably not for most blog readers! But the General Introduction I provided to the two volumes is reasonably accessible and explains what these writings are, where they came from, and why they are important. […]
August 15, 2024
My Book on Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene
The only book I’ve written because I wanted to use the title is Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene: The Followers of Jesus in History and Legend. It was a blast to write. One could argue that in one respect or another these three were historically the most significant followers of Jesus (whether they were in their own day or not is another question). In my view they are the only followers of Jesus that we can say with relative certainty that they *claimed* to have seen him raised from the dead (a controversial view on all sides). And most intriguing, there are lots of extraordinary legends about them that survive and that, in fact, are still believed by many people today, for example that Peter was crucified upside down; Paul was beheaded; and Mary was a prostitute. And those are just among the more tame accounts. It’s also interesting to figure out what we can actually know about them historically. Hence my book, which devotes six chapters to each figure. Here is how I describe the book […]
August 17, 2024
Jesus’ Followers in History and Legend
I continue here describing my book Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene (Oxford University Press, 2005), with a final excerpt from the Introduction. In my previous post I discussed how historical accounts and literary fictions mix in the accounts we have of these three key followers of Jesus. I pick up from there:
August 18, 2024
Did Jesus Have Secret Disciples Among the Elite?
Here’s an intriguing question I got a while back, with my response. QUESTION: What do you think of the idea symbolized by the Joseph of Arimathea character that there may have been closeted sympathizers or even fellow travelers of the Jesus movement among members of the Sanhedrin? RESPONSE: It’s a good question. My sense is that it is virtually inconceivable that there were followers of Jesus, closeted or otherwise, in the Sanhedrin. For a lot of reasons. The main one is that according to our earliest accounts, Jesus’ entire public ministry was spent teaching in Galilee. He was unknown in Jerusalem (I know that John puts him there earlier on several occasions, but that’s a later conceit). I think the first time anyone in Jerusalem had ever even heard of Jesus was when he caused the ruckus in the Temple the last week of his life. So he almost certainly had no followers among the aristocratic elite there. In addition to that, I think the later Christians who told stories about Jesus wanted their hearers/readers […]
August 21, 2024
A (Modern-Discovered) Gospel That Shows Jesus Was Married With Children?
Recently I’ve talked about “recently discovered Gospels” (e.g.,The Secret Gospel of Mark); and just now I remembered a tempest-in-a-tea-pot breathless announcement made ten years ago about a “new Gospel” that had been discovered that showed Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married with children. This is NOT the gnostic Gospel of Philip I’ve talked a number of times before (where Jesus is kissing Mary somehow, someway, and somewhere or other). Here’s a post I published on it when the “news” first broke. It’s still pretty interesting… ****************************** I have been repeatedly asked about the brand new news story, that a new Gospel has been discovered that shows that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and that they had children. If this sounds like (bad) fiction to you (think Da Vinci Code) (or for movies: think “Last Temptation of Christ”), it is. The claim is completely bogus. This “new” Gospel is not a Gospel, but a text that scholars have known for roughly forever. It’s not a text about Jesus: it’s about Joseph (as in the […]
Tags: Jesus' wife, Joseph and Aseneth, Simcha Jacobovici
August 20, 2024
Losing Your Religion: Today and in Antiquity
Many of us have agonized over leaving the faith we held dear and clung on to for long periods of our life. Most of us have never thought about what it would have been like for ancient peoples to leave *their* religions, not to move to agnosticism or atheism, but because a *different* religion was taking over. That is part of what I address in my book The Triumph of Christianity (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2017). I have been providing posts summarizing the issues I address in my various popular books. I’ll continue to do that now with Triumph. This is how I begin the book, not in a place one might expect! But with one of the great poets of doubt in modernity…
August 22, 2024
Was Christianity Bound to Take Over the Ancient World?
In retrospect, it may seem that that it was inevitable that the Christian religion would take over the western world, more or less destroying the many Greek and Roman religions that had been around for time immemorial. Was it? And was this Christian take over actually a “triumph” to be celebrated? I continue my thoughts with another excerpt from the Introduction to my book The Triumph of Christianity (Simon & Schuster, 2018). ******************************
August 24, 2024