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Paul’s Letter to the Romans: For Further Reading
Since Paul’s letter to the Romans is so central to the modern study of Paul, most of the scholarly books written about Paul for general audiences will either deal directly with it or be in part based on it. For a list of some of the best of those, see my previous post (“The Life and Letters of Paul: For Further Reading” (March 16, 2025). I devote a full chapter to Romans in my textbook, Bart Ehrman and Hugo Mendez, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings, 8th ed. (Oxford University Press, 2024), ch. 21. That’s a good place to start for a fuller exposition of what I have given here in my nutshell posts. If you have an earlier edition of the book, it will be pretty much the same, except for the expanded bibliography. Here is bibliography based on my seventh and eight editions (combined) of my book:
March 25, 2025
Unusually Important for the Letter to the Romans: Paul’s Models of Salvation
In my initial post on Romans that gave a “nutshell” view of its overarching message, I indicated that Paul explained his Gospel by means of a “bad news/good news” schema, that in the shortest hand possible explained that all humans, whether Jew or Gentile, were doomed because of “sin” (bad news) but could have “salvation” through the death and resurrection of Jesus (good news). I also indicated that in Romans Paul expressed this bad news/good news scenario in two major ways. In this post I want to explicate the matter further. Elsewhere on the blog I’ve called these two ways of understanding sin and salvation as “models” of Paul’s understanding of how Christ can bring reconciliation with God. Both models involve “sin” but mean something different by it; both show that Christ can bring deliverance from salvation but express how it works in a different way. I normally call these two ways of understanding it all as the “judicial” and the “participationist” models. In very rough terms, the “judicial” model is principally laid out in […]
March 23, 2025
Two Fundamental Questions: How Do You Date a Manuscript and How Do you Know the Meaning of a Word?
Among the interesting questions I’ve received recently from blog readers, two strike me as especially key for understanding how scholars make the claims they do; one of the questions challenges whether I have grounds to make one of the claims I do! Good questions. Some grounds (say, of coffee) are better than others. Here are the questions and my responses. ****************************** QUESTION What is the process to assign a year to a text? For example, when you say that the earliest text of Matthew that we still have comes from 375 CE where do you get that date? Do the authors of the texts write the year? Thanks!
April 2, 2025
The Letter to the Romans: Who, When, and Why?
In my previous post I summarized the major themes of the letter to the Romans; in that context I mentioned already some of the key aspects of both authorship and purpose. But in this post I want to dig deeper into who wrote it, when, and at particular length, why. ****************************** Romans is the sixth book of the New Testament and the first for which we are virtually certain as to the authorship. The Gospels and Acts are anonymous, only later attributed to their eponymous authors (eponymous being one of those words I love). Romans, however, names its author — in the first word! “Paul.” Lots of other writings claim to be by the apostle Paul but were actually written by other people claiming to be Paul, as I’ve mentioned; six of those are in the NT (at least six that are debated) and there are more than that outside it (none of which are debated). But in this case there is little doubt about the matter. This letter claims to be by Paul, is […]
March 22, 2025
Interested in Visiting the Greek Islands with Me? Spots Still Available!
In case you didn’t catch this the first time, I’d like to invite anyone who is interested and able to come with me on an amazing trip this summer, in just two months. Space is limited – so if you’re interested, check out the brochure I provide below at the bottom of the post. It will give you all the details you would need to know, and I’m happy to address any questions you have. Here is what I say about the trip in the description. ************************* The Greek Islands are some of my favorite places on earth. I’ve been on a number of occasions, and this Thalassa Journey is taking me there again. Wanna come with me? We will be island-hopping to some of the most scenic sites in the world – stunningly gorgeous landscapes and seascapes, incredibly beautiful villages and towns, museums, monasteries, churches, and archaeological sites: some of the oldest remnants of western civilization. I can’t tell you how excited I am about this trip. Some of the places we’ll be […]
March 18, 2025
Paul and Women Apostles
Here now is a final post about an interesting feature of Paul’s letter to the Romans. as you may know, Paul is often considered one of the real misogynists of Christian antiquity. But I’m not sure that’s right. Most of the antipathy toward his views are based on 1 Timothy 2:11-15, a book he didn’t write, and 1 Corinthians 14:34-35, a passage that was probably inserted into his letter by someone else. No one can deny (well, at least I can’t deny) that there are yet other passages in Paul that are completely unacceptable to modern proponents of women’s rights, including, rather forcefully, me. BUT there are other passages that show that Paul not only allowed, but encouraged, women to be leaders of the church, in a world where women’s leadership of most anything outside the private space of the home was both unusual and frowned upon. A key passage comes at the very end of Paul’s letter to the Romans.
March 27, 2025
Will I See Fido in Heaven? Webinar on the Afterlife of Animals with Me and Barbara Ambros
In case you missed the announcement, I’m doing a one-hour webinar on whether your beloved pet will be joining you in the heavenly realm when you’ve both passed of your respective mortal coils. It’s this Sunday, March 23, 1:00, remote. All info below. It’s a fundraiser for my department, to help grad students in their programs to be trained as researchers and teachers. A worthy cause! The Robert Miller Fund is one that I myself started some years ago, to provide assistance for grad students needing to present papers at conferences and similar needs. It’s an increasingly important cause for those of us committed the spread of knowledge about religion in the generation to come. Here’s the fuller announcement (with video). Register: https://unc.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_9Oxg0DBJQ_2WiyHKO7Elsw Donate: https://give.unc.edu/donate?f=105550&p=aasf Will I See Fido in Heaven? The Afterlife of Animals in Buddhism and Christianity Do our pets go to heaven? Do they have souls? Can we talk about the salvation of a pet? What about reincarnation, can our pets come back as other animals, or even as people? This new webinar […]
March 21, 2025
One of the Most Misunderstood Verses of Paul: Flesh and Blood Will Not Inherit the Kingdom
Now that I’ve discussed the major themes and emphases of 1 Corinthians, explained when and why Paul wrote it, and given some bibliography to check out if you decided to dig deeper, I’d like to explain the one passage of 1 Corinthians I get asked about more frequently than any other. It involves Paul’s view of the future resurrection of the dead. I have repeatedly stated on the blog that Paul believed that ultimate salvation did not entail dying and your soul going to heaven or hell or any other kind of purely “spiritual” existence, but an actual bodily resurrection that, for the saved, would lead to a bodily existence for all time in the presence of God. How is *that* supposed to work? And didn’t he say that “flesh and blood” would NOT inherit the kingdom (1 Corinthians 15:50)? Here I explain how Paul understood it was all to happen. This is taken (slightly edited) from my fuller discussion in my book Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife (Simon & Schuster, 2020). […]
April 9, 2025
1 Corinthians in a Nutshell
I continue now in my thread of providing “nutshell” overviews of each of the books of the New Testament by moving on to one of the favorite Pauline letters for many readers, Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. In 1 Corinthians Paul deals with a number of ethical issues confronting the Christian community. Among its many gems is one of the favorite passages of the entire Bible, the “love” chapter of 1 Corinthians 13, which has been read at roughly 99.9% of all weddings in the history of humanity. One of the big surprises of actually studying the book is that what this chapter is not discussing anything about a wedded couple having many years of marital bliss. In fact, it’s not about marriage but, well, using one’s spiritual gifts in the church. Go figure. 1 Corinthians is Paul’s second longest surviving letter (next to Romans) and is difficult to summarize briefly, in part because it deals with so many issues, one-by-one. Have you read it? Ever think about it? If not, no problem. Keep […]
April 3, 2025
1 Corinthians: For Further Reading
Since Paul’s letter of 1 Corinthians is so central to the modern study of Paul, most of the scholarly books written about Paul for general audiences will either deal directly with it or be in part based on it. I devote a fuller discussion of 1 Corinthians in my textbook, Bart Ehrman and Hugo Mendez, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings, 8th ed. (Oxford University Press, 2024), ch. 20. That’s a good place to start for a fuller exposition of what I have given here in my nutshell posts. If you have an earlier edition of the book, it will be pretty much the same, except for the expanded bibliography. Here is an annotated bibliography of books that will deal with 1 Corinthians, most of them as part of their overall discussion of Paul and his letters. For direct discussion of 1 Corinthians in particular, see especially the book by Dale Martin (The Corinthian Body) and the two commentaries. ******************************
April 8, 2025
1 Corinthians: Who, When, and Why?
Now that I have summarized the major themes and emphases of 1 Corinthians in the previous post, I can address the more specific questions of authorship, date, and purpose. 1 Corinthians is one of the seven undisputed Pauline letters – which, of course, does not mean that no one has ever disputed its authorship, only that the solid critical consensus is that Paul wrote it. Its writing style, themes, mode of argumentation, presupposed historical context, theological views, and most everything else cohere well with what we can establish as Pauline, so in this case (unlike letters such as Ephesians or 1 Timothy) there is little reason to doubt its authorial claim. As is true of all of Paul’s letters (and the ones forged in his name!) 1 Corinthians begins (as did nearly all ancient personal correspondence), with the writer stating his name and indicating to whom he is writing: Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and our brother Sosthenes, To the church of God that is in […]
April 6, 2025
2 Corinthians in a Nutshell
In this series of posts have been summarizing each book of the New Testament, in canonical sequence, “in a nutshell.” I have now come to 2 Corinthians, a book less-frequently read and known than 1 Corinthians. Have you read it? Do you know it? If so, try to give a summary of it, in one sentence of fifty words. Here’s my attempt. In 2 Corinthians Paul explores the history of his checkered relationship with the church in Corinth, recounting both his gratitude that they have turned back to him in friendship and loyalty after earlier having rejected him, and severely upbraiding them for questioning his apostolic authority and following other “super apostles.” Now I will try to unpack the letter at greater, though still nutshell, length.
April 12, 2025
Questions on Jesus’ Eschatology, Mark’s Accuracy, and Why Genre Matters
Here are some questions I’ve recently received from blog readers on various intriguing topics, and my responses. QUESTION: Thanks for the extremely helpful distinction between apocalypticism and eschatology. I would appreciate clarification on another distinction, namely the distinction between “consistent” eschatology and the “realized” eschatology promoted by C.H. Dodd. If I understand correctly, the “consistent” eschatology of Schweitzer argues that Jesus’s teaching consistently refers to the Kingdom of God being something that was coming in the future, at the end of time. This contrasts to “realized” eschatology, in which Jesus is understood as saying that the Kingdom of God has been fully realized in the present, through Jesus’s person and ministry, and that no future expectation is required. Am I correct in this understanding? If my understanding is correct, would you agree that the realized eschatology argument seems to be a case of “special pleading,” invoked because the proponents of it don’t like the idea of Jesus getting his apocalyptic eschatology so desperately wrong?! I mean, if many Jewish people at the time of Jesus […]
April 10, 2025
Interpolations and Textual Variants in the New Testament
In my previous post I indicated that among the five letters that may have been cut and pasted together to make up 2 Corinthians is one that some scholars suspect Paul did not write. If not, how did it get in 2 Corinthians with fragments of letters he did write? To remind you: this is what I said about it there:
April 17, 2025
Taking 2 Corinthians to Pieces….
I’ve mentioned several times in these posts on 2 Corinthians that scholars are reasonably confident that it is made up of two letters of Paul that have been cut and spliced together (chs. 10-13 was the first chronologically; chs. 1-9 later), and I’ve pointed out that some think it is made up of four or five letters. It seems that since I’m on the topic, and will not be again for a long while, I should repost a blog that I’ve done within living memory (as opposed to twelve years ago) since it deals directly with the topic. Before explaining the situation, I should say that when I first heard in graduate school that 2 Corinthians was made up of five different letters, all spliced together, it struck me as a bit crazy, but as I looked at the evidence I began to see that it made a good bit of sense. I should also say
April 16, 2025
2 Corinthians: Who Wrote It, When, and Why?
Now that I’ve given a 50-word summary of the book of 2 Corinthians and a fuller discussion of its contents “in a nutshell,” I can turn to the questions of “Who, When, and Why.” As with Romans and 1 Corinthians there is not a lot of debate about who wrote the letter: it is one of Paul’s undisputed epistles and there are no real doubts about its authorship among the majority of critical scholars. As to when: the letter dates to some time not long after 1 Corinthians – maybe a matter of months? And so it too is usually dated to the mid 50s. But the issue is complicated by the fact that we appear to have at least two letters that have been spliced together, and these were written at different times. They were written for very different reasons. And so to make sense of the “why” of 2 Corinthians, I’ve decided to give the play-by-play of the sequence of events that we can reconstruct of Paul’s history of the community – from […]
April 13, 2025
2 Corinthians: For Further Reading
This annotated list of readings on 2 Corinthians will look very familiar to those of you who have looked carefully at the list for 1 Corinthians I gave earlier. That is because many books deal with both together, either on their own or as a part of a broader discussion of Paul and his letters. I devote a fuller discussion of 2 Corinthians in my textbook, Bart Ehrman and Hugo Mendez, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings, 8th ed. (Oxford University Press, 2024), ch. 20. That’s a good place to start for a fuller exposition of what I have given here in my nutshell posts. If you have an earlier edition of the book, it will be pretty much the same, except for the expanded bibliography. Here is an annotated bibliography of books that will deal with 2 Corinthians. ****************************** Aune, David. The New Testament in Its Literary Environment. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1987. Includes a superb discussion of the practices of letter writing in Greco-Roman antiquity as the social context for Paul’s […]
April 15, 2025
Proof that Luke Used Matthew? And Interpolations in Luke about the Virgin Birth.
I continue to get terrific questions from readers. Here are two rather tough ones on the Gospel of Luke, with my responses. QUESTION: This is a question of whether there is some good evidence that Luke used Matthew (rather than both of them using the hypothetical Q source.) How do you explain the fact that
April 19, 2025
Galatians in a Nutshell
Galatians in a Nutshell Paul’s letter to the Galatians is one of the most important and intriguing books of the New Testament, in parts not difficult to understand and in other parts densely packed with meaning, and therefore heavily disputed (check out Galatians 2:17-19 or 3:19-20 some time; if you think either is obvious, I can assure you your obvious interpretation is very much disputed!). It is only six chapters long, but there’s a lot in there. I had a friend in graduate school who wrote an entire dissertation to unpack just one verse (3:1). How to summarize it in one sentence of 50 words? If you’re familiar with the book, give it a shot. Here’s one attempt at it:
April 20, 2025
Galatians: Who, When, and Why?
My previous post summarized the overarching message of the letter to the Galatians; in this one I can dig a bit deeper into the historical issues of authorship, date, and occasion. Like Romans and 1 and 2 Corinthians, there is little doubt among scholars that Paul wrote Galatians. It is characteristically his theme, theological outlook, mode of argumentation, writing style and so on. Many of the themes/issues he addresses here recur in his letter to the Romans, though under completely different circumstances. In both letters he wants to stress a major point of his gospel message, that justification, (being made right with God) comes only through the death and resurrection, not through keeping the Jewish law; but whereas in Romans he is explaining his gospel in relatively calm and measured (even if passionate) terms, in Galatians he is on the attack against Christian missionaries who oppose him and his message, and any of his converts who side with them. Romans is usually considered the last of Paul’s surviving letters; there are debates about the dating […]
April 22, 2025