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Twelve Days of Christmas Day 1: From a Historical View
The Twelve Days of Christmas! I’d like to honor the tradition by giving twelve of my favorite Christmas-themed posts over lo these many years the blog has been in existence. I am not ranking them in any particular way as a countdown to my #1 favorite, much as the famous English Christmas Carol itself. Speaking personally, I’d prefer “five golden rings” both to what came earlier (say, “three French hens) and to what came later (what am I going to do with “ten lords a leaping”?). They are just the twelve. And here’s the first, from 2012. ****************************** Right now I have the Christmas on my mind — as makes sense this time of year. But I have some other reasons. First, I have agreed to write a brief (2000-word) article for Newsweek this week [December 2012], to be published in a couple of weeks, about the birth of Jesus, and this has made me think about the other Gospels (from outside the New Testament) that tell alternative accounts of Jesus’ birth and young life.
December 13, 2024
Twelve Days of Christmas Day 2: The Myth of the First Christmas
Here now is the second of my twelve favorite Christmas posts of years gone by, in our celebration of the Twelve Days of Christmas. *********************** Once more the season is come upon us. At its heart stands a tale of two-thousand year vintage, the Christmas story. Or perhaps we should say the Christmas myth.
December 14, 2024
Twelve Days of Christmas Day 3: A Different Account of Joseph and Mary!
Here now is the third of my twelve favorite Christmas posts of years gone by, in our celebration of the Twelve Days of Christmas. ****************************** As we move to the Christmas season, I thought it would be interesting to post some extracts on one of the most popular Gospels in the Middle Ages, an account of Jesus’ birth – and before that, his mother Mary’s birth – and what happened in the aftermath. It is called the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, because modern scholars once thought that it had claimed to be written by Matthew (the author of the first canonical Gospel); but in fact, as you will see, it claims to be written by Jesus’ brother James.
December 15, 2024
Twelve Days of Christmas Day 6: Why Does Matthew Have the Story of the “Wise Men”?
Here now is the sixth of my twelve favorite Christmas posts of years gone by, in our celebration of the Twelve Days of Christmas. ****************************** QUESTION: My Bible group had a good time yesterday comparing Matthew’s and Luke’s accounts of the Christmas story. One question that came up was why would Matthew relate the story of the Magi? RESPONSE Ah, it’s a great question and – as it turns out – an important one for understanding the Gospel of Matthew. The story is found only in this Gospel (But this time of year, who can keep ones mind from jumping to: “We Three Kings of Orient Are….”), and it is filled with intriguing conundra. For example, why would pagan astrologers from the East be interested in knowing where the King of Israel was born and come to worship him? Were they doing this for all babies who were bound to become kings of foreign countries? How does a star lead them to Jerusalem and then disappear and then reappear and lead the Magi not just […]
December 18, 2024
Twelve Days of Christmas Day 4: O Little Town of Nazareth?
Here now is the fourth of my twelve favorite Christmas posts of years gone by, in our celebration of the Twelve Days of Christmas. ****************************** On several occasions on the blog I have discussed the similarities and differences between the accounts of Jesus’ birth in Matthew and Luke (Matthew 1-2 and Luke 1-2), most recently, I think, two years ago at this time (check out the archives for December 2020). I won’t go over all that turf again just now, but I do want to hit several of the key points because I think the *discrepancies* between the two accounts that appear irreconcilable tell us something significant about the birth of Jesus. I think they help show that he was actually born in Nazareth. Both accounts go to great lengths to show how Jesus could be born in *Bethlehem* when everyone in fact knew that he *came* from Nazareth.
December 16, 2024
Twelve Days of Christmas Day 5: Matthew’s Version of the Birth of Jesus
Here now is the fifth of my twelve favorite Christmas posts of years gone by, in our celebration of the Twelve Days of Christmas. ****************************** Yesterday’s blog was about the account of Jesus’ birth in Luke; today I talk about Matthew. Even a casual reading shows that these are two very different accounts. Matthew has nothing about the birth of John the Baptist, the Annunciation, the census, the trip to Bethlehem, the shepherds, the presentation in the Temple. Matthew’s version, as a result, is much shorter. Most of his stories are found only in his account. And some of the differences from Luke appear to involve downright discrepancies, as I will try to show in another post. For now: Matthew’s version. Matthew begins with a genealogy of Jesus. Luke also has a genealogy, but it is given after Jesus is baptized in ch. 3, instead of where you would expect it, at his birth in ch. 1. I’ll explain my view of that in a later post. After the genealogy of Matthew in which Jesus is […]
December 17, 2024
Twelve Days of Christmas Day 7: The Birth of Jesus in Luke
Here now is the seventh of my twelve favorite Christmas posts of years gone by, in our celebration of the Twelve Days of Christmas. ****************************** As I’ve indicated, it is only Matthew and Luke that tell the tales of the infancy narrative, and the annual “Christmas Pageant” that so many of us grew up seeing is in fact a conflation of the two accounts, making one mega-account out of two that are so different up and down the line. And so, the Annunciation to Mary is in Luke, the dream of Joseph in Matthew; the shepherds are in Luke, the wise men in Matthew; the trip to Bethlehem is in Luke, the Flight to Egypt is in Matthew, and so forth and so on. You can compare them yourself, up and down the line, and see the differences. In this post
December 19, 2024
Twelve Days of Christmas Day 8: Why Was Jesus Born of a Virgin in Matthew and Luke?
Here now is the eighth of my twelve favorite Christmas posts of years gone by, in our celebration of the Twelve Days of Christmas. This one is from 2014. ****************************** A few days ago I raised the question of why anyone should think that you have to believe in the Virgin Birth in order to be a Christian. The reality is, of course, that many Christians do not believe in it, but recognize that it is a story meant to convey an important theological point – a point that could be true whether or not the story happened – that Jesus was uniquely special in this world, not like us other humans, but in some sense the unique Son of God. Just as the moral of a fairy tale is valid (or not) independent of whether the tale happened, so too with stories like this in the Gospels, whether you choose to call them myths (in a non-derogatory sense), legends, tales, or simply “stories intending to convey a theological truth.” It is interesting, and not often noted, that […]
December 20, 2024
Twelve Days of Christmas Day 9: A Key Contradiction in the Birth Narratives of Jesus
Here now is the ninth of my twelve favorite Christmas posts of years gone by, in our celebration of the Twelve Days of Christmas. This one comes from 2018. ****************************** Let’s explore the key contradiction in the Birth Narratives of Jesus. Several readers have asked about my comment that Matthew and Luke appear to contradict each other in their birth narratives, especially when Matthew indicates that Jesus’ family fled to Egypt after his birth but Luke claims they went straight back to Nazareth, a month later. I’ve posted on this issue several times over the years on the blog, but maybe a refresher would be helpful for those with questions. Here is how I explain the matter in my book Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium, slightly edited. (See especially my final point.)
December 21, 2024
Twelve Days of Christmas Day 10: What Can We Know About Jesus’ Birth?
Here now is the tenth of my twelve favorite Christmas posts of years gone by, in our celebration of the Twelve Days of Christmas. ****************************** Browsing through holiday-season blogs from previous eras, I came across my first small thread on Christmas from exactly six years ago. I had forgotten about this. Some of the material has shown up occasionally in the intervening years, but maybe it’s a good time to repost a bit of it. Here is the first: an account of what we can, and cannot, know about Jesus’ birth. Bethlehem? Virgin? Date? Or even
December 22, 2024
Twelve Days of Christmas Day 11: My Article on Christmas in Newsweek Part 1
Here now is the eleventh of my twelve favorite Christmas posts of years gone by, in our celebration of the Twelve Days of Christmas. ****************************** I mentioned in my previous post that in 2012 I was asked to write an article on Newsweek about the Christmas story. Before it appeared I posted it on the blog; here it is in full (at least as I sent it in to the magazine), in two parts. Here is the first half: This past September, Harvard University professor Karen King unveiled a newly discovered Gospel fragment that she entitled “The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife.” This wisp of a papyrus has stirred up a hornet’s nest and raised anew questions about what we can know about the historical Jesus of Nazareth, and about whether there are other Gospels outside the New Testament that can contribute valuable information. Few questions could be more timely, here in the season that celebrates Jesus’ birth. The fragment is just a scrap – the size of a credit card – written in Coptic, the language of […]
December 23, 2024
Twelve Days of Christmas Day 12: My Article on Christmas in Newsweek: Part 2
Here now is the twelfth (and final!) of my twelve favorite Christmas posts of years gone by, in our celebration of the Twelve Days of Christmas. ****************************** Yesterday I gave Part 1 of my Newsweek article on Christmas, published in 2012. Here is Part 2! Most modern readers who are not already familiar with these stories [in the apocryphal Gospels such as the Proto-Gospel of James] tend to find them far-fetched. That’s almost always the case with miraculous accounts that we have never heard before – they sound implausible and “obviously” made up, as legends and fabrications. Rarely do we have the same reaction to familiar stories known from childhood that are also spectacularly miraculous, and that probably sound just as bizarre to outsiders who hear them for the first time. Are the stories about Jesus’ birth that are in the New Testament any less far-fetched? It depends whom you ask. This past November, Pope Benedict XVI published his third book on the life of Jesus, this one focusing on the New Testament accounts of his birth, Jesus of Nazareth: […]
December 24, 2024
August 2025 Gold Q&A
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July 25, 2025
Platinum Repost: The Death and Afterlife of Jesus: A Historical Reconstruction Part II – Guest Post by Platinum Member Mark Reichert
We recently shared part one of a post written by Platinum blog member, Mark Reichert. You can find the first part here. Here now is the second part of his two-part reflections in which he offers his own reconstruction of what might have happened after the crucifixion. So what do I think really happened? There is no way to know for sure but I can put together a story that seems plausible and makes sense to me.
August 21, 2025
Q3 2025 Platinum Webinar – September 9th
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August 8, 2025
September 2025 Gold Q&A
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August 22, 2025
Scheduled Blog Maintenance – Monday Sept. 8th
If you’ve been following along with the blog the last few years, you’ve probably heard various rumblings about a new blog platform. You might have even have periodically wondered, “Is that project still happening? What’s the latest?” We’re excited to let you know that the first phase of the new platform we’ve been working on behind the scenes is finally ready to launch on Monday, September 8th. The blog will briefly go offline during this time. Here’s what that means: The blog will likely be down for 8–12 hours, though it could take up to 2 days. During that time you’ll just see a maintenance message when you navigate to the website. If any scheduled posts are impacted, they will simply be published when the site is back up and running. You won’t miss anything! When it’s back up, you won’t notice any visible changes. The blog will look and work just the same for the time being. The difference is under the hood. We’ve cleared out years of technical debt, which means from here […]
September 5, 2025
January 2025 Gold Q&A
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December 27, 2024
2024: Ehrman Blog Year in Review
2024 has been a remarkable year for the Blog. We have set a record for the amount of money we raised and donated to our charities; we have hired a highly skilled CEO who has taken charge and already made vast improvements, and we have chosen a design company to come up with a whole new platform (Blog 3) that will revolutionize how we do things. Details to follow. But first let me say I am especially pleased that we have succeeded in pursuing the original goals of the blog (in some ways, better than ever). Namely: (1) To spread and propagate real knowledge about the historical Jesus, the New Testament, and the history and literature of Christianity over its first four centuries or so, and in doing so to generate more interest, dispel more ignorance, and encourage more thinking on religious, historical, and literary issues that are of particularly keen interest to the two billion Christians in the world and also of keen interest to the billions of others who are not believers but […]
December 31, 2024
The Gospel of Matthew: For Further Reading
Now that I’ve devoted two posts to the major sine qua non of Matthew’s Gospel – one that lays out its major themes and emphases, the other that deals with who wrote it, when, and why, I can provide a bibliography of important works, written by scholars for non-scholars. You may find one or more of these useful if you choose to to explore Matthew’s Gospel further. I have given brief annotations for each book to give you a sense of what it’s about and so help you decide which, if any, might be worth your while.
January 19, 2025