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Cleopatra, Virgin Births, and Professional Scribes: More about antiquity…
Here are yet three more excellent questions I have received from blog readers, all of them both interesting and important. QUESTION: I recently came across a rather bold and curious linguistic claim regarding the term ‘Paraclete’ within the Gospel of John, and I was hoping to ask your opinion of it. To be exact, it theorizes that the word “Parakletos” may be translated as “praised in excess over” or “glorified in excess over”. Apparently, according to this claim, the word “kleos” (κλέος) translates to “glory” or “renown”. An example cited to support this theory is the Queen Cleopatra, whose name is the Latinised form of the Ancient Greek Kleopatra, meaning “glory of her father”, derived from ‘kleos’ meaning “glory” and ‘pater’ meaning “father”. So, according to this theory, if we adopt the meaning of “praise” or “glory”, then the verbal adjective ‘kletos’ can be translated as “praised” or “glorified”. The resultant alternative literal translation apparently renders ‘parakletos’ as “praised more than/in excess over” or “glorified more than/in excess over”. If I may ask, in your academic […]
September 24, 2025
Some Reflections on Our (My) Finitude and the Fear of Death
I have come up with a new way of thinking about our finitude, about the fact that we all die and (in my view) that’s the end of the story. At least I think it’s a new way. I don’t recall ever hearing or reading it. If it is a common view, or a least a view that is out there (and/or long has been!), I have no doubt some of you will tell me. First, some background:
September 21, 2025
The Letter of Jude in a Nutshell
We come now in this “New Testament in a Nutshell” series to the penultimate book of the canon, the short letter of Jude. I begin by giving a one-sentence ,fifty-word summary of the book, before, in this post, explaining more fully its themes and emphases.
September 25, 2025
Book of Jude: Who Wrote it? When? And Why? (part 1)
In my previous post I explained the major themes and emphases of the letter of Jude, including some of its most intriguing and even unexpected features (e.g., quoting apocryphal tales/texts as seemingly authoritative scripture). In this post and the next I will deal with the thorny questions of who actually wrote it, when, and why. Since it claims to be written by “Jude, the brother of James” it is traditionally been understood to have been penned by Jesus’s own brother, Jude (Mark 6:3). Is that right? As I’ve done a few times before, I’ve decided to provide a longer and more nuanced discussion in this case about whether it is in fact a forgery. The following is drawn from my book Forgery and Counterforgery (Oxford University Press, 2013). I’ve edited it in places to make it more accessible to broader audiences. This will take two posts.
September 27, 2025
Jude as Pseudepigraphic (i.e., forged)
I concluded my previous post by indicating that a number of Christian readers/leaders in the ancient world considered Jude not to be authentic – that is, that it was a forgery written in the name of Jesus’s brother by someone else. Here I continue the discussion, again taken from my study, Forgery and Counterforgery (Oxford University Press, 2013) ****************************** Modern times have seen a healthy split among scholars who see the book as authentically written by the brother of Jesus and of James, and those who consider it forged.[1] Numerous factors give the palm to the latter group. For one thing, book gives every indication of being produced relatively late in the first century, after the “age of the apostles.” The apostles themselves are referred to as living in the past, and as predicting the “last time” when the author is now living – differentiated from the time of the apostles themselves (Jude 17-18).
September 28, 2025
A New Way to Support the Blog: Become a Blog Steward
When I started the blog back in 2012, I had two main goals. The first was to take the historical study of the New Testament and early Christianity out of the academy and make it available to anyone who wanted to learn. The second was to do some good with it. From the very beginning, every membership fee has gone straight to charity. That’s now added up to more than $3 million for organizations fighting hunger, homelessness, and more. But here’s the reality: because every membership fee is passed directly to charity, the blog itself doesn’t keep a penny to cover its own expenses. Running this site costs money (staff, technology, infrastructure, growth). Those costs have only ever been met by a handful of generous supporters working quietly behind the scenes. Without them, there would be no blog, no community, and no charitable giving. Now we’re opening that small group of supporters more formally, and inviting you to become a Blog Steward. (You can proudly call yourself a BS’er!) What It Is A Blog Steward […]
September 22, 2025
1 Enoch: The Scripture Quoted by Jude
In my posts on Jude (In a Nutshell) I pointed out that the book quotes the apocryphal Jewish writing known as 1 Enoch. Many of you will not be intimately familiar with this intriguing book, so I thought I should spend a couple of posts explaining what it is. I have taken the following from my book Journeys to Heaven and Hell (Yale University Press, 2022); I discuss 1 Enoch there because it does indeed narrate a visit to the realms of the dead by a mere mortal – unlike anywhere in the Hebrew Bible. Here is what I say there, in a slightly edited version. (This will take two posts.) ******************************* The Hebrew Bible never describes the realms of the dead. Samuel is temporarily summoned from death at Saul’s request, but he does not describe what it was like (2 Samuel 28); Elijah ascends to heaven, but we never learn what he sees there (2 Kings 2); Ezekiel has a vision of the throne room of God, but not the dwelling places of the […]
September 30, 2025
Unpacking 1 Enoch, the Apocryphal Writing Quoted by Jude
In my previous post I began to describe the Jewish apocryphal book 1 Enoch, the only apocryphon clearly quoted in the New Testament, and apparently quoted as an authoritative Scripture (Jude 14-15). Here I pick up where I left off, describing what the opening section of the book, the “Book of the Watchers” is all about. The apocalyptic strain of the book is here obvious from the outset. ****************************** After a short poem the author launches directly into his account of the coming judgment by describing a future theophany to (literally) end all theophanies.
October 1, 2025
Does Jude Attack Pauline Christians?
In my previous two posts I’ve tried to show why the short letter of Jude appears to be forged in the name of Jesus’s own brother Jude. That naturally leads to the question of why someone would do that – not just in general (why write a forgery!): there were lots of early Christian forgeries, just as there were lots of Jewish, Greek, and Roman forgeries, all done for a range of reasons, which I lay out in my book Forged. But why was this particular book forged, and when, and how would we know? I deal with that problem here based on (and sometimes lifting from!) my discussion in my book Forgery and Counterforgery (Oxford University Press, 2013), reworked and reworded to avoid some of the crazy jargon and in-house talk that scholars often use in order to show that they are … scholars. It would be helpful, first, though,
October 4, 2025
Jude, The Denigration of Angels, and the Followers of Paul
In my previous post I tried to show that the pseudonymous author of the book of Jude appears to be attacking an understanding of the Christian faith endorsed by members of Paul’s churches sometime after his death – that is, he is not attacking Paul head-on, but the views that had developed after Paul’s day to an extreme he would have himself strongly objected to. I summed up this view with this paragraph. The alleged opponents of Jude argue that: Antinomian activities (actively sinful lives) demonstrate the full grace of God, which alone brings salvation – see how GRACIOUS God is? He’ll save you by faith even if you are an immoral Cretan! Or at least the author of Jude portrays his opponents as making that argument. Whether they did so or not is anyone’s guess; but it does give one pause that Paul himself was falsely accused of something similar already decades earlier (as he indicates in Romans 3:8). In any event, this charge against what appears to be a (post-)Pauline position can help […]
October 7, 2025
Seventy Years on This Planet and One Fundraiser: You’re Invited
Today I’m celebrating one of those birthdays that ends in a zero. Yes, October 5th marks my 70th spin around the sun. Ouch. Or… Yay! For reasons that escape me, people keep insisting that reaching such an age is an accomplishment. Personally, I think of it more as an accident, but an accident worth marking if it can do some good in the world. And that’s what I’d like to do with all of you. A Birthday Fundraiser To celebrate, we’re announcing a special fundraiser here on the blog to support the charities that all your membership fees already go to. This time, I’ll be giving a live online lecture, and you’re invited. It will be called “How Things Change: Major Archaeological and Scholarly Discoveries in my Fifty Years of Research“ Here’s the idea: The lecture will talk about how much more we know now (and what different things scholars think now, since I devoted myself to this field in the mid 70s. Wanna come? We’re asking for a donation — not for me (though […]
October 5, 2025
A Primer for the Study of the Historical Jesus: Our Non-Gospel Sources
As some of you know, my recording company, Paths in Biblical Studies (PBS) which normally produces online courses (www.bartehrman.com) held its third annual New Insights Into the New Testament (NINT) live/remote/recorded conference last week. The topic was the Historical Jesus, and we had eight speakers along with a keynote address by Elaine Pagels (you can see it all here:
October 8, 2025
Problems with the Gospels: A Primer for the Study of the Historical Jesus (Part 2)
This now is the second part of the Primer on the Historical Jesus prepared by Marko Marina, which deals head on with the hardest question of all: how do scholars deal with the Gospels of the New Testament “critically” (not “criticizing” them but providing an honest assessment of their historical value) Marko provides a very clear summary and set of insights, as you’ll see:
October 9, 2025
Four Intriguing Topics in the Study of the Historical Jesus
The previous two posts explained why scholars have such difficulty using the Gospels as historical sources, as explained by early Christianity scholar Marko Marina (see more about him here: https://tragoviproslosti.eu/about-me/). This primer was mean to set the stage for the eight lectures given by a range of internationally known historical Jesus scholars at our New Insights Into the New Testament conference at the end of September. Marko ALSO provided overviews of what the lectures would be about and why he thought the topics were important. Here is what he said about the first four (to be continued in the next post), the lectures given by Mark Goodacre (Duke University), Helen Bond (University of Edinburgh), Dale Allison (Princeton Theological Seminary, emeritus), and Joel Marcus (Duke Divinity School, emeritus):
October 11, 2025
Four More Intriguing Topics on the Historical Jesus
The previous post provided a summary of the first four lectures given by internationally known historical Jesus scholars at our New Insights Into the New Testament conference at the end of September (the summary was produced by Marko Marina, in advance of the lectures). The second day of the conference also had four lectures, by Paula Fredriksen (Boston University emerita and Hebrew University of Jerusalem), Me (UNC Chapel Hill), James Tabor (UNC-Charlotte, emeritus), and A.J. Levine (Hartford International University and Vanderbilt University, emerita). Well, sort of. James Tabor was in Athens and his Internet went a bit haywire, so he had to record his talk later — it is included in the recording of the conference. In its place, I gave a rather impromptu additional talk (on whether Jesus was probably literate). Here are Marko’s summaries of the lectures, made in advance of the conference itself:
October 12, 2025
The Book of Revelation in a Nutshell
We are fast approaching the end of this series on “The New Testament in a Nutshell,” in which I explain in summary fashion each book of the Christian (“new”) Scriptures. As is natural, we end with the final book of the New Testament which, as is also natural, is a detailed account of how the world as we know it will end, the book of Revelation. (Please note! It is not “Revelations” but “Revelation.”) The Revelation of John, also known as the Apocalypse of John or just the Apocalypse (“apocalypse” is the Greek word for the Latin term “revelation” – both mean an “unveiling,” a “disclosure,” a revealing”) is the most mystifying and at-first-glance bizarre book of the New Testament, one of the the least read (people generally find it too strange), and the most widely misunderstood (since those who *do* read it take it to mean something other than it does). If I were to summarize it in fifty words, I could probably do worse (and better, for that matter) than this:
October 13, 2025
Why Most People Who Read Revelation Are Wrong About It
I’m going to spend a few posts explaining what the book of “Revelation” is actually “revealing,” but first I want to explain what it is NOT revealing. It is not revealing what is to happen soon, in our own day, as fundamentalist readers (just about the only ones who read the book in any detail) have repeatedly claimed (insisted!) for the past 200 years. Just last week there was another fundamentalist scare: the rapture is gonna happen soon! Hey, read the book of Revelation, it SAYS so!! Yeah, no it ain’t gonna happen soon and no, Revelation does not say so. It’s about something else. Who knew? Well, critical scholars for one. And anyone who follows all these doomsday predictions and predictors for another. Here’s (part of) what I say about it in my book Armageddon: What the Bible Really Says about the End (Simon & Schuster, 2022). ****************************** It can be amusing for non-fundamentalist readers who first encounter modern prophecy books (which are written to show how the Bible predicts how the end is […]
October 15, 2025
The Book of Revelation: Who Wrote It?
Now that I have summarized the book of Revelation – it’s not that difficult to follow the basic structure of the narrative — we get to the thorny questions of who wrote it, when, and why. In this post we deal with the WHO. The author of Revelation certainly claims to be John (1:1), but there were numerous “Johns” in the early Christian community. Which one was he? He does give some information about himself (1:9): he is the “brother” of the Christians he is addressing and he shares their tribulation as he writes to them from the island of Patmos, off the west coast of Asia Minor. Since his readers knew him, he had no need to explain any further who he was. Later readers, however, have tried to figure out his identity. John was a
October 16, 2025
The Book of Revelation: When and Why?
In my previous posts I have given a sketch of what the book of Revelation (AKA the Apocalypse of John) is all about, and discussed who actually wrote it (some fellow named John, but not John the son of Zebedee). Now we can move into the question of when it was written and why. I have taken this account from my textbook The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction 2nd ed. (Oxford University Press). ****************************** As with all the apocalypses of the ancient world, it is important to situate the Revelation of John in some kind of historical context to make sense of its bizarre symbolism. There are hints scattered throughout the book that portions of it were written in the time of the emperor Nero (in the early 60s C.E.), although the final product is usually
October 18, 2025
Revelation is an Apocalypse. What Is An Apocalypse?
To most modern readers, the Apocalypse of John seems mystical and bizarre, quite unlike anything else that they have read or, well, want to read. In part, this explains some (other) peoples’ fascination with the book—it is so strange, so unearthly, that its descriptions cannot simply have been dreamt up. Its supernatural feel seems to vindicate its supernatural character. The historian who approaches the book, however, sees it in a somewhat different light, for this was not the only book of its kind to be written in the ancient world, even if it is the only one that most of us have ever read. As with all genres (novels, epic poems, short stories, limericks) apocalypses shared a number of literary conventions that made them different from other kinds of writing. If
October 19, 2025