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Did Jesus’ Death Matter? The Intriguing View of the Coptic Apocalypse of Peter


From remembering the birth of Jesus (Christmas!), we turn for a moment to remembering his death.  I recently received this question, in response to my statement that some Christians did not think the death of Jesus mattered for salvation, and others maintained that he never actually died.   QUESTION: Can you give some reference to where I can explore this idea of the Crucifixion being unimportant or not happening at all? RESPONSE: I will take two posts to answer this question, since they involve two different sets of “Gnostic” belief, which, in brief, was a distinctive and “declared-heretical” understanding of the Christian faith that stressed that the ultimate divine realm was not closely connected with this material world (the highest God was not the Creator), a world that was to be escaped, not one that would be redeemed.  One document that embraces the view that the death of Jesus had no bearing on salvation is the Coptic Apocalypse of Peter, which provides an alternative understanding of what happened at Jesus’ death – as witnessed by […]

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December 26, 2017

Did They Crucify the Wrong Guy? Jesus’ Identity Switch.


Yesterday I posted about the Coptic Apocalypse of Peter, which clearly differentiated between the man Jesus and the spiritual being, the Christ, who inhabited him temporarily – leaving him at his suffering and death since the divine cannot suffer and die.  That understanding of Jesus Christ is not, strictly speaking, “docetic.”  The term docetic comes from the Greek word DOKEO which means “to seem” or “to appear.”  It refers to Christologies in which Jesus was not a real flesh-and-blood human but only “seemed” to be. In reality, what they saw, heard, and touched was a phantasm. That is not what is going on in the Coptic Apocalypse of Peter.  Here there really is a man Jesus – flesh and blood like the rest of us.  But he is indwelt by a divine being who leaves him at his death, abandoneding him to die alone on the cross.  That is similar to a docetic view, but also strikingly different.  I call it a “separationist” Christology because it separates Jesus from the Christ (who himself separates from […]

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December 27, 2017

The Virgin Birth and the Gospel of John: A Blast from the Past


As I’ve indicated on the Blog before, I tend to go to a Christmas Eve Midnight service with my wife Sarah (usually my one time in church during the year), and this year was no exception.  We were in Suffolk, England, in the town of Woodbridge, and attended the Anglican church there for a very nice service.  The Gospel reading was from John (1:1-14), a standard reading.  But I wondered whether anyone in the congregation realized that this passage in John says nothing about Jesus’ being born of a virgin — one of the very big points of the Christmas message today!   And just now I wondered if I had ever talked about that very interesting factoid on the blog.  It turns out, the answer is yes, precisely three years ago today.  This is what I said then. ********************************************************************* I have pointed out that our earliest Gospel, Mark, not only is lacking a story of the virgin birth but also tells a story that seems to run precisely counter to the idea that Jesus’ mother […]

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December 28, 2017

Are There Cut-and-Paste Jobs in the New Testament? The Case of 2 Corinthians


How much of the early Christian writings consist of scissors-and-paste jobs, where later editors cut up earlier writings and stitched them together into one continuous work, so that what we have now are not the originals but only the final edited version?  Are there books like that, for example, in the New Testament?  In a recent post I mentioned how the early Christian writing called the Didache is that kind of thing, with three documents artificially combined into the 16-chapter book we now have.  That prompted the following question from a blog member. QUESTION: It seems like there was a lot of “cutting and pasting” in early Christianity. It reminds me of how I cobbled together different parts of the World Book when I turned in my first high school papers.  Do we know whether or not this kind of editing was a common practice during the first three centuries? RESPONSE: Yes, it does appear that we have other examples of that kind of thing in the surviving early Christian writings – including at least […]

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December 30, 2017

Year in Review 2017!


2017 has now come and, as of tonight, gone.   For some of us it has been a very good year, for others a very bad one.  Probably for most of us it has been mixed.  For the blog, it has been very good indeed. So here are some of the important results! First, some background.  As many of you know (some of you were actually here back then), we started this blog endeavor in April 2012.   So we’ve been going at this for five years and nine months.   The original purpose of the blog was to raise money for charity.  Rather than using my somewhat limited culinary skills and even more limited time by volunteering for a local soup kitchen, I decided that I could use my scholarly skills more productively by starting a membership-only blog.  Everyone thought I was crazy.  This is the INTERNET!!!  You can’t make people *pay* for it! I ignored all the advice and scorned all the warnings and tried it anyway.  My original thought — fool that I was – […]

December 31, 2017

Is 2 Corinthians *FIVE* Letters?


In my previous post I tried to show why most critical scholars think that the letter of 2 Corinthians is actually two different letters that have been spliced together.   When I was back in graduate school, I learned – to my surprise – that there were scholars who thought that in fact 2 Corinthians was made up of five different letters, all spliced together.  At first that 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’m not completely committed to that idea, but I’m inclined toward it.  My sense is that this is the view of a sizeable minority of critical scholars, but I have no data, only anecdotal evidence, to back that up. In any case, what matters more is what you yourself might think of it.  I won’t be giving the evidence in full, but here is how I lay it out for students to consider in my textbook on the New Testament for undergraduates.   To […]

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January 2, 2018

Speaking Engagements and Blog Dinners for January and February


Here is a first-of-the-year update on my speaking schedule.  If you happen to be in the area where I’m giving a talk – come!   For two of the events (Jan. 24 in Naples Florida; Feb. 9 in D.C.) I’d like to organize a small Blog Dinner, if anyone will be there.   Blog Dinner?  Wednesday January 24, Naples Florida.  See the event below.  Is anyone interested in having dinner, either because you’ll be attending the event or because you just happen to be around?  My idea is to have 3-5 people and to eat good food, drink good drink, and talk about anything you feel like talking about for a couple of hours.  The dinner will have to start late, 8:30 pm or so (I think), since I’ll be flying in only after my morning-long seminar.  If you’re interested, let me know via email, at [email protected].   The first five to reply get the lucky award.  If there aren’t two or three interested, we’ll put it off for another time.   There is THIS proviso though: I […]

January 3, 2018

February Dinner Full!


I’m pleased and sorry to say that the table for the Blog dinner in D.C. on February 9 is now full!   Sometimes people cancel, however, so if you would like to be put on a waiting list, I am happy to do that.   I’m looking forward to meeting those who have signed up.  For all others — next time!!

January 4, 2018

January Dinner Full!


I’m pleased and sorry to say that the table for the Blog dinner in Naples Florida on January 24 is now full!   Sometimes people cancel, however, so if you would like to be put on a waiting list, I am happy to do that.   I’m looking forward to meeting those who have signed up.  For all others — next time!!

My Long Favorite Pauline Letter: Philippians


There is one other book in the New Testament that may be a cut-and-paste job, and as it turns out, it is another one of Paul’s letters, Philippians.  Philippians was for a long time my favorite Pauline letter, back in my late teens when I was first starting to read the Bible.  It contains the first verse I ever memorized: “For me to live is Christ and to die is gain” (1:21); and it is the first book that, a couple of years later, I committed completely to memory, word for word.  Little did I know, back then, that some scholars think it is in fact two different letters of Paul’s that have been spliced together. The evidence of there being two letters in Philippians is not as clear and compelling as in the case of 2 Corinthians, and I suspect, but do not know for a fact, that the *majority* of scholars hold to the “integrity” of the letter.  In this case, the word integrity has nothing to do with “honesty.”  It is the […]

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January 5, 2018

Can Historians Be Neutral?


I received a number of responses to my post this past week on whether Jesus would have received a decent burial on the day of his crucifixion.   One of the most interesting responses was not so much about what I said or thought, but about a much broader question: how can one evaluate arguments over such controversial subjects without being entirely biased and subjective at the outset?   It’s worth talking about.  Here’s the question:   QUESTION: Re: the burial of Jesus or not:  Do you have any suggestions for how to be objective regarding issues like this? Maybe it would help to first figure out where the burden of proof should be. Does historicity demand something like clear and convincing evidence that something happened–so that any significant doubts require rejection of the supposed incident? Or just that one thing is more likely to have happened than another?   RESPONSE: I won’t here deal with the particular issue of Jesus’ burial, but with the broader issue of how one remains “neutral” or “disinterested” when trying to […]

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January 7, 2018

More Cutting and Pasting? Paul’s Letter to the Philippians


I have been discussing instances in the New Testament where letters appear to have been cut-and-pasted together.  The key example is 2 Corinthians, but one could make the case (and many have!) that something similar is true of Philippians.  Here is how I explain it in my book The New Testament:  A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings.   **************************************************** The Unity of the Letter The first two chapters of Philippians sound very much like a friendship letter written by Paul to his converts. The occasion of the letter is reasonably evident (see especially 2:25–30). The Philippians had sent to Paul one of their stalwart members, a man named Epaphroditus, for some reason that is not disclosed (until chap. 4). While there ministering to Paul, Epaphroditus was taken ill; the Philippians had heard of his illness and grew concerned. Epaphroditus in turn learned of their concern and became distraught over the anxiety that he had caused. Fortunately, his health returned, and he was now set to make his journey back home to Philippi. Paul […]

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January 8, 2018

Were Cut and Paste Jobs Common in Antiquity? Guest Post by Brent Nongbri


I have been talking about 2 Corinthians and Philippians, both of which may well represent instances in which earlier letters were cut and pasted together.    A number of readers of the blog have asked me if this kind of thing was ever/often done in the ancient world.  As it turns out, one of the blog members is an established New Testament scholar, Brent Nongbri (PhD from Yale; visiting associate professor at Aarhus University), who is interested in this kind of question. (He’s also the author of Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept and God’s Library: The Archaeology of the Earliest Christian Manuscripts.)  Unsolicited, he sent me the following note: asking and then answering the question, with a link to a fuller study. These are his words: *********************************************************************************** “Do we know whether or not this kind of editing was a common practice during the first three centuries?” I had this very question a few years ago, specifically regarding 2 Corinthians. I’ve read a lot of ancient letters, and I had never really seen like […]

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January 9, 2018

The Blog Podcast


As most of you may be aware, the “Bart Ehrman Blog Podcast” began six months ago.  John Mueller, who has been a blog member for many years but doesn’t comment much, reached out to me last summer and offered to create the it.  His idea for the podcast was simply to read some of my posts, each week. He hoped that the podcast would attract more people to the blog, which in turn would increase membership in the blog, which in turn would raise more money for the charities supported by the blog, which in turn would help eradicate poverty, hunger, and homelessness, and hence, he would feel good about himself because he did his part to help the World and the Universe as we know it. John gave me an offer he hoped I “couldn’t refuse.”  He offered to set up the podcast, fund it, choose what is read each week, narrate it, publish it, keep me updated on its numbers, and scrap it at a moment’s notice if I so requested. My obligation […]

January 11, 2018

My Greek New Testament Course


For the first time in forever I am teaching a new course — one I’ve never taught before — at UNC, a class for classics students (and others who already know Greek) on the Greek New Testament.   It is obviously a very small class (6 or 7 students); to be in it students have to have already had at least a couple of years of Greek.   So the class is not teaching the rudiments of Greek grammar, but it assuming knowledge of that. We are reading/translating/analyzing lots of Greek in the class; learning about “textual criticism” (how to establish the oldest wording of the text given all variations among the manuscripts); and acquiring the skills to read and analyze actual manuscripts (the hand written copies of the New Testament, as opposed to the printed editions of the Greek). For anyone interested in the details and the play-by-play, here is the syllabus I handed out yesterday: ************************************************************************************* NEW TESTAMENT GREEK Religion 409 / Greek 409 Spring 2018 Instructor:  Dr. Bart D. Ehrman   Course Description This […]

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January 12, 2018

Accessing the Bart Ehrman Blog Podcast


I neglected in my previous post to mention how you can actually *access* the weekly podcast! If you go to iTunes and type in “Bart Ehrman” it is the top podcast to appear and individual episodes appear as well.  Or, just click here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/bart-ehrmans-sunday-sermon/id1265249890

Request for Help! Your Favorite Podcasts.


One month from today — on Feb. 13 — my new book will be published.  As many blog members know, over the years I have written (in broad terms) three kinds of books: academic books for hard hitting scholars in my fields of interest; college-level textbooks for undergraduates; and trade books for a broader audience of interested (and interesting!) people. This new book The Triumph of Christianity: How a Forbidden Religion Swept the World will be the thirty-first book I’ve published, my fifteenth trade book.   Among those fifteen books, by far the best selling one has been Misquoting Jesus.  In my personal opinion, the best (in terms of overall quality) was probably How Jesus Became God.  But (we all have our favorites), I think The Triumph of Christianity is even better, the most important, and the best conceived, researched, and written.   But, again, that’s just me. It is very difficult for any book, no matter who wrote it or in what circumstances, to make a difference and to become a best-seller.   Every author (whether they […]

January 13, 2018

Pre-order Triumph of Christianity and Get Some Serious Perks!!


Preorder Triumph of Christianity: How a Forbidden Religion Swept the World, and get significant perks! The book will appear in book stores on February 13.  But if you order it online before that, whether a member of the Bart Ehrman Blog or not, you can receive some hefty discounts. FIRST: anyone who buys the book in advance online (e.g., at Amazon, or Barnes and Noble, or wherever) who is NOT already a member of the Bart Ehrman Blog will be given a FREE one-month trial membership, with full access to the posts, past and present.   SO, if you are not a member – go for it!  If you are a member: tell everyone you know: a FREEBIE! SECOND: for everyone, blog member or not: if you buy the book in advance online,, by special arrangement with the Great Courses (previously called The Teaching Company), you will be able to order any of my (eight) courses for an 80% discount.  80%! These are the courses I’ve done for the Great Courses: The New Testament The Historical […]

January 15, 2018

Paul’s Views of Women


In this week’s mailbag I take up a very interesting question about whether there are other passages in the New Testament that are found in all of our manuscripts but that appear not to have been originally written by the author.  That is, they were (possibly) passages inserted by a later editor, before any of our surviving manuscripts were made, so that they are universally attested, but probably not original.  That is what I argued for 2 Corinthians 6:14 (it’s a standard scholarly view).  And that prompted the following question:   QUESTION: I hadn’t noticed the oddness of the 2 Corinthians 6:14 passage before, but it does seem out of place. Kind of like the woman-caught-in-adultery story in John 8, where the narrative flows smoother without that insert. Are there any other major examples of significant insertions into the NT books?   RESPONSE: It is important to note the difference between 2 Cor. 6:14 and the passage in John 8.  The latter is missing in our oldest and best manuscripts; the former is found in […]

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January 16, 2018

Paul and His Female Disciple Thecla


I’m in the middle of talking about whether Paul wrote the verses now found in 1 Cor. 14:34-35, or if they were later added to his letter by an editor/scribe.  To make sense of what I have to say next about the issue I need to provide just a bit more background, specifically about a legendary figure well known in the early church, but not widely known about today outside the realm of early Christianity scholarship.  This is a one-time-household-name: Thecla, supposedly a female disciple of Paul. Here is what I say about her and her significance in my Introduction to  the New Testament: ******************************************************** Paul’s words (in his authentic letter) may have taken on a life of their own as they were used in new contexts, gaining a meaning that was independent of what they originally meant when he proclaimed them to his converts. Interestingly, the distortion of Paul’s message is explicitly recognized as a problem even within the pages of the New Testament (2 Pet 3:16). This may be what happened in a […]

January 17, 2018