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Constantine’s Vision(s): What Did He Really See and When?
OK, I am ready now to finish up my thread on the conversion of Constantine, based on the vision or visions that he had. So far I have narrated the three relevant accounts. If you haven’t read those posts, you should do so to make the very best sense of this one. The differences among the three accounts, and one can readily see why various scholars have suggested different ways of reconciling them. Some think he had just one vision, two years before the Battle at the Milvian Bridge (just before the panegyric of 310 CE), which at the time he took to be of Sol Invictus but later came to interpret as being instead a vision of Christ. In this view, at a still later date Constantine came to think that he had always understood it to be Christ and that, since the vision was so closely connected with his ultimate victory, he came to “remember” that it occurred the night before the battle. At the other extreme of interpretation, others have argued that […]
Tags: Constantine, Triumph of Christianity, vision
July 26, 2016
Video of How Jesus Became God: Part 2 (of 3)
On January 29-31, 2016, I gave three talks at Coral Gables Congregational Church in (surprise) Coral Gables, Florida, all on my book, “How Jesus Became God.” I posted the first of the talks last week. Here now is the second. Please adjust gear icon for 1080p High-Definition. How Jesus Became God -UCC Part 2 of 3: If you don’t belong yet to the blog, JOIN! You will get lots of posts (5-6 a week), videos, and comments. Tons of stuff, for very little money. And all proceeds go to fight hunger and homelessness.
Tags: Apotheosis, Divinization, How Jesus Became God, the historical Jesus
August 19, 2016
Where Did the Trinity Come From? Video Lecture.
Here is the third of my three talks that I gave last year at Coral Gables Congregational Church in (suprise) Coral Gables, Florida, on my book, “How Jesus Became God.” This lecture deals with one of the most important questions in Christian thinking: where did the idea and doctrine of the Trinity come from? Good question! I try to answer it in this video. Enjoy! Please adjust gear icon for 1080p High-Definition. How Jesus Became God -UCC Part 3 of 3: If you don’t belong to the blog yet, JOIN!! You get good stuff like this ALL THE TIME, for very little cost. And all proceeds go to fight hunger and homelessness. So join!
- Book Discussions
- Constantine
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Tags: Apotheosis, Divinization, How Jesus Became God, Trinity
September 2, 2016
Who Wrote the Book of Revelation and the Fourth Gospel?
Speaking of the Apocalypse (from the previous post giving that odd video): Someone recently asked me if the same author could have written both the book of Revelation and the Gospel of John. Interesting question! Traditionally, both books have been identified as coming from the same person, John the son of Zebedee, the fisherman who was one of Jesus’ closest disciples. In answering the question I would like to stress two points: first, they almost certainly were not written by the same person (note: they do not claim to be); and second, whoever these two authors were, neither one of them was John the son of Zebedee. Before making these two points, I need to explain the traditional view: same author for both, John the son of Zebedee. With the book of Revelation, the reason for the identification was simple: the author explicitly says that he was named John. Already in v. 1 he indicates that the Revelation was given to himself, John, and in v. 9 he is even more explicit: “I, John, your […]
Tags: authorship, Gospel of John, Revelation
July 28, 2016
Bart Ehrman vs. Michael Brown on Suffering
In my post on Saturday I discussed the issue of death and laid out briefly my view that this life is all there is. That does not mean, however, that I think we should just party-hard since there is no life to come. I have long been intrigued by the “problem of suffering,” and I have never, in fact, taken it to be just an intellectual problem. I think as human beings we need to deal with suffering if we want to lead life to its fullest. But I’m still intrigued with the problem: how can there can be such massive suffering in the world if there is a God in control of it? I have had several debates on the subject, and here is one of the hardest, on video. The debate was with Dr. Michael L. Brown, a very smart Jewish believer in Jesus. We had the debate on April 15, 2010, at Ohio State University. The debate was inspired largely by my book, “God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our […]
Tags: God's Problem, Michael Brown, OSU Debate, Suffering
September 19, 2016
Celibacy and Polygamy in the Bible: Weekly Readers’ Mailbag July 30, 2016
In this week’s Readers’ Mailbag I’ll be addressing two questions having to do with marriage: first, is it possible that Jesus was not actually celibate but was married and second whether the Bible allows for multiple wives and/or husbands. Hot topics! QUESTION Why do so many NT scholars (most recently John Meier) state as fact that Jesus took a lifelong vow of celibacy? Wouldn’t it be more historically accurate simply to say that the NT is silent on the topic? RESPONSE I have dealt with this issue on the blog before but here let me simply give the brief version, by making a couple factual points and then making a specific argument Factual points: No ancient source of any kind indicates that Jesus was married. The recent “discovery” of the so-called “Gospel of Jesus’ wife” has been shown to be a modern forgery. No Gospel (or any other writing from antiquity) indicates or even suggests that he had (or ever had) a wife (let alone that he had any kind of sexual relationship […]
July 30, 2016
The Author of Revelation
In this post I want to explain why it is almost universally thought that the same author did not write the fourth Gospel and the book of Revelation, and then to show why the latter author was almost certainly not John the son of Zebedee, Jesus’ close disciple. So far as I know, only fundamentalists today think that John the son of Zebedee did write the book of Revelation. There are really only three things that speak in favor of this view: (1) The author was someone named John (hey! If he was John he was John, right? Well, John was a very common name, and he doesn’t claim to be *that* John) (2) The book of Revelation, like the Gospel of John, speaks of Christ as a lamb who was slain and thinks of him as the Word of God (that shows that it had similar views, not that it had the same author) (3) Church tradition for centuries has maintained that John the son of Zebedee was the author. The evidence on the […]
Tags: authorship, Revelation
August 1, 2016
Did John Write the Fourth Gospel?
In my previous post I explained why the author of the book of Revelation, someone named John, was not claiming to be John the son of Zebedee and in fact probably was not John the son of Zebedee. I also showed why this author was not the same one who produced the fourth Gospel, the Gospel of John. Now I want to talk about the Gospel to show that it too was probably not written by John. The first thing to stress – it can’t be stressed enough – is that like the other Gospels of the New Testament, the Gospel of John (as I’ll continue to call it, for the sake of convenience, since that is, after all, the title that was later given to it) is completely anonymous. The author does not tell us his name or identify himself in any way. I have already explained why people in the early church came to *think* the book was written by Jesus’ earthly disciple, John the son of Zebedee (see https://ehrmanblog.org/who-wrote-the-book-of-revelation-and-the-fourth-gospel/ from a few […]
Tags: authorship, Gospel of John, literacy
August 2, 2016
The End of Time in Revelation and the Gospel of John
I have been arguing that the author of the Fourth Gospel and the author of the book of Revelation could not have been the same person, and in looking back at my posts I realize that I have left out an important point, one of the strongest arguments that we are dealing with two different people. The theology of these two books is radically different on an issue that is completely central to both of them: their understanding of “eternal life.” It is true that in some respects these two books have similar theological views. I have already mentioned, for example, that both see Christ as the “Word” of God (no other NT author expresses this view) and as the “Lamb” who was slain (again: these two books alone use that image). But both of them are very much interested in views of eschatology, and on these views they differ radically. The term “eschatology” means the “understanding of the end times.” Just about everyone has a view about what happens at “the end.” Some think […]
Tags: Apocalyptic, apocalypticism, Gospel of John, Revelation
August 3, 2016
Who Could Read and Write? A Blast from the Past.
It’s been fun for me to look over posts on the blog from years ago. Here is one of relevance to some of my recent comments on the book of Revelation, for two reasons. One involves literacy: who could read and write? Could John the son of Zebedee? The other involves “secredaries.” Since my Revelation posts, a couple of people have asked me if it’s possible that the author used a “secretary” for the book (that is: since John the son of Zebedee couldn’t write, maybe he instructed a literate companion to write it for him.) The issue of “secretaries” in early Chrsitianity was the subject of two posts that I made exactly at this time, four years ago. I’ll give both posts, since they strike me as of perennial significance (and interest!) Here is what I said back then (as you’ll see, in this case the issues involved whether Peter could have written 1 Peter) ***************************************************************** IN RESPONSE TO MY POSTS ON SECRETARIES AND THE BOOK OF 1 PETER, SEVERAL PEOPLE HAVE RAISED […]
Tags: ancient literacy
August 4, 2016
How Did Ancient Writers Use Secretaries? A Blast from the Past
Here is the second of a series of three blasts from the past — from four years ago when I was dealing with how secretaries were and, especially, were not used in the ancient world by authors when producing their work. Did authors (such as John for the book of Revelation, or Peter for either 1 or 2 Peter) use a secretary to write their books for them? To answer the question with something other than common sense (that is, common guessing), we need to know about secretarial practices in antiquity. As it turns out, we do know some things, as I’ll explain in this post and the next. This is what I said four years ago now: ****************************** I have received some comments and emails about my claims about Silvanus as a secretary (or rather, NOT as a secretary) for the book of 1 Peter, and realized it would help if I could give some more detail about what we know about secretaries in the ancient world. The following is from an excursus in […]
Tags: Forgeries, Paul, pseudepigrapha, secretaries
August 5, 2016
Does a Person Need the Holy Spirit to Interpret the Bible? Is John’s Gospel Accurate? Readers Mailbag August 7, 2016
Does a person need to “have the Holy Spirit” in order to interpret the Bible? And does the Gospel of John give a historically accurate accounting of the teachings of Jesus? These are the two questions I will be dealing with on this week’s Readers’ Mailbag. If you have any questions, simply ask them as a comment to any of the posts on the blog, and I’ll add them to the list. QUESTION: How do you respond to those who say “you can’t correctly interpret the bible unless you have the Holy Spirit” RESPONSE: I’ve never found it at all convincing that a person needs the Holy Spirit in order to interpret the Bible. As an agnostic, of course, I don’t believe in the Holy Spirit (since I don’t believe in God). But even when I did believe in the Holy Spirit, I thought that it was silly to claim that a person could not interpret the Bible correctly without the Spirit – for a couple of reasons that have always struck me […]
Tags: biblical interpretation, Gospel of John
August 7, 2016
Did Ancient Secretaries Actually Compose Writings? A Blast from the Past
Here is the third (and last) post on the use of secretaries in the ancient world, in which I discuss the issue of whether illiterate people (like Simon Peter, or John the son of Zebedee) could have had someone else write their books for them – so that 1 Peter *could* in some sense actually be by Peter if he couldn’t write, or the Revelation of John be by John. These three posts are all blasts from the past, reruns from exactly four years ago on the blog. Here is what I said back then about secretaries. ********************************************************************************** THIS IS A CONTINUATION OF MY PREVIOUS POST ON SECRETARIES IN THE ANCIENT WORLD, DRAWN FROM MY FORTHCOMING BOOK FORGERY AND COUNTERFORGERY. IN THE EARLIER POST I TALKED ABOUT THE USE OF SECRETARIES IN TAKING DICTATION AND DOING LIGHT COPY-EDITING, BASED ON THE FINDINGS OF THE FULL STUDY OF RANDALL RICHARDS. THE DISCUSSION IS RELEVANT TO THE WRITINGS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT: COULD 1 PETER, OR EPHESIANS, OR ANY OF THE OTHER PSEUDEPIGRAPHICAL WRITINGS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT […]
Tags: Forgeries, pseudepigrapha, secretaries
August 8, 2016
What Do We Call It? Coming Up with a Book Title.
I am at a critical juncture in my current writing project, and thought I could provide an update on my progress over a few posts. Today I talk about titles As I earlier indicated on the blog, I am tentatively calling the book: The Triumph of Christianity: How the Followers of Jesus Destroyed the Religions of Rome. I’m not sure what the final title will be – this is just what I’m working with for now. The main title (Triumph of Christianity) is pretty secure, I think. It is what I proposed to my publisher (Simon & Schuster) when I first floated a prospectus of the book before them to see if they were interested in publishing it, and they were (and I think are) enthusiastic about it. The subtitle is simply the best I could come up with. I rather like it, but I’m not sure they will. Titles are complicated affairs, as I’ve mentioned (a long time ago) on the blog. For an *academic* book (that is, a scholarly book written for scholars), […]
Tags: book titles, trade books
August 9, 2016
Ehrman vs Craig: Evidence for Resurrection
Over ten years ago now (March 28, 2006) I had a debate with William Lane Craig, author of Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics and On Guard: Defending Your Faith with Reason and Precision, at the College of the Holy Cross, on the question: “Is There Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus?” Craig is a conservative evangelical Christian philosopher. Yes, a real philosopher — that is, he teaches courses in philosophy and writes about it; but from a very conservative Christian perspective. I never met Craig before the debate, and in places, the debate gets a little … lively. Even testy. Craig and I have had zero contact with each other ever since. Craig provided a full transcript of the debate on his site Reasonable Faith here: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/is-there-historical-evidence-for-the-resurrection-of-jesus-the-craig-ehrman I would assume that since he posted the transcript he thinks he pretty much mopped me up. Maybe he did! Please note: The video quality from the source is not great, since old-style equipment was used to record the event. We have added color and audio […]
Tags: faith transitions, historical jesus, resurrection
January 25, 2017
Why Scholars Aren’t Trained To Write Trade Books
In yesterday’s post I talked about how books for a general audience — trade books — get their titles. I’ve decided that I want to say something more broadly about the nature of trade books, and I’m going to do so in a rather circuitous way, by talking about why most scholars don’t (and can’t) write them. It’s not at all a bad thing that they don’t, in my opinion. We only need so many books for non-specialists on the Big Bang, the Civil War, and the historical Jesus. All told, we probably have more than enough. Moreover – and this will be the point of this post and probably a few more to come — trade books are not what scholars are trained to produced. Scholars are trained to write serious research for other scholars. And that’s what they spend their lives doing: advancing scholarship for experts in their fields. That’s not only what most scholars want to do. In many ways, it is the only thing they are actually trained to do. My […]
Tags: graduate school, religious studies
August 11, 2016
Speaking in Churches as an Agnostic; and Jewish Beliefs about Afterlife. Readers Mailbag August 13, 2016
I will be dealing with two rather wide-ranging questions in this week’s Readers Mailbag: What is it like for me, a public agnostic/atheist, to give a talk to believers in a church? And what did Jews believe about the afterlife in the time of Jesus? QUESTION: Dr. Ehrman, do churches hire you to lecture on Christianity knowing that you’re an atheist? Do you ever get tempted to say, “Let’s be honest here. I think all of your cherished religious beliefs are baloney, but I’ll humor you for the next couple of hours.” That’s how I feel when I tell someone that they can accept the Theory of Evolution and still believe in God, even though, deep down inside, I know that Evolution and God mix like oil and water, so I simply humor them. RESPONSE: Ah, right, this is a good question. As it turns out, I do get asked to speak in churches on occasion. Sometimes, of course, it is in order to have a debate with a conservative Christian apologist. […]
Tags: afterlife, heaven, hell, Sheol
August 13, 2016
Being Trained To Interpret Texts
In some rather surprising and ironic ways, I think my training in a particularly obscure and technical aspect of New Testament studies made me *more* qualified to write books for a general audience than most of my colleagues and peers. Almost everyone I knew in my graduate program was interested almost exclusively in two areas of academic research: exegesis and New Testament theology. I was interested in something that most of them did not care about in the least: textual criticism. Let me explain the difference before discussing why an interest in the *least* reader-friendly field helped make me better able to make scholarship *more* reader-friendly. “Exegesis” is the technical term used for the science and art of interpretation of texts. It may seem obvious to you that interpreting a text is a simple matter. You read what it says and you understand it. No problem, right? Wrong. In fact interpretation of texts is a highly complicated affair and requires both well-thought out methodology and rigorous discipline. We spent many years – hard years of […]
Tags: exegesis
August 15, 2016
Studying New Testament Theology
This thread has turned into an explanation of why most New Testament scholars – that is, professional researchers and teachers with a PhD in the field – are not well situated to write books for a general audience. My reflections on that question – once I get around to it – are probably not what one would expect. At least they seem ironic to me. But before going there (in a later post), I should stress that what is true of NT scholars is true of virtually all scholars in virtually all fields of intellectual inquiry. Most are not equipped (or inclined) to write books for their next door neighbor. They are trained and interested in producing scholarship for other scholars, sometimes just for a small coterie of scholars who are specialists in their own narrowly focused field of intense research. (I need to emphasize that I do not think this is a bad thing at *all*. I think it is a very good thing. Scholars are trained to advance scholarship. We only need a […]
Tags: new testament theology
August 17, 2016
Another Approach to New Testament Theology
There is another aspect of the study of New Testament theology to what I discussed in yesterday’s post. That post was focused on how one “does theology” with the New Testament – that is, how one uses the New Testament texts in such a way as to inform, critique, call into question, authorize, and dialogue with the important intellectual and practical aspects of life as a Christian, both individually and in community. That is the sort of thing theologians do who are interested in the sacred texts of Scripture, and it is something many of my friends who were doing PhD’s in New Testament studies were ultimately invested in, especially since most of them saw their graduate training in the field to be preparation for serving the Christian church. But there is another equally important aspect of New Testament theology that is more historical in its focus. If you imagine a spectrum of disciplines with exegesis (the determination of what an author originally meant, to put it in its simplest terms) on one end, and […]
Tags: new testament theology
August 18, 2016