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Loading...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 need to know about the dinner, one way or the other, within a week, by January 10, so if it doesn’t happen, I can go to my plan B. No cost to attend, other than getting there and paying for your meal.
Thursday January 25, Naples Florida. I will be giving a talk that evening at the Naples United Church of Christ, on my (soon-to-be-released!) new book “The Triumph of Christianity” (it hits the bookstores on Feb. 13). The event is free and open to the public.
Friday-Saturday Feb. 2-3, Chapel Hill NC:. This is a four-lecture series on The Triumph of Christianity for the UNC “Carolina Public Humanities.” For this occasion, the books will be available (ahead of publication!) for purchase. It requires a (paid) ticket, though, and I don’t know if any are available. So check! It’s at this website: https://humanities.unc.edu/event/the-triumph-of-christianity-in-the-ancient-world-an-encore-presentation/ There is a lecture Friday afternoon, followed by a dinner, and then a second lecture that evening; the next morning there are two lectures. The dinner is a buffet-line kind of thing, nice but nothing fancy. If anyone from the blog comes, we could arrange to sit together for the dinner hour. Let me know!
Blog Dinner? Friday, Feb. 9, Washington D.C. Similar to January 24 in Naples: I will be in D.C. for the event the next day (see below). Is anyone interested in having dinner, either because you’ll be attending the event or because you just happen to be around? Again, 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. 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. No cost to attend, other than getting there and paying for your meal.
Saturday, Feb. 10, Washington D.C. This is an all-day seminar at the Smithsonian, the same four lectures I’m giving in Chapel Hill the week before. Hopefully they’ll be better this time. Books will again be available for purchase and signing. Again, it is a paid event. It appears it is already sold out, but if you want to be put on the waiting list, go to the website: https://smithsonianassociates.org/ticketing/Tickets/Reserve.aspx?id=240871
Wednesday Feb. 21, Kennesaw, Georgia. This is an event I haven’t announced before on the Blog. It will be a public debate with Mike Licona, an apologist and professor at Houston Baptist University, and the author of Why Are There Differences in the Gospels and The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach. Mike and I have debated several times before, on the question of whether historians can demonstrate, on historical grounds, that Jesus was raised from the dead. Mike says yes, I, well, say no. This debate is on something else, whether the Gospels of the New Testament can be accepted as reliable. You can guess what our answers are. J The debate will be at 7:00 pm at the Bailey Performance Center, Morgan Hall at Kennesaw State University.
So that’s *it* for January and February. More than enough, for my taste!
Fantastic! I popped off any email to you, Dr. Ehrman.
As for your debate with Licona on the topic of the resurrection, would this be your 73rd or 74th time debating this topic with him over the past 135 years? Or does it just feel that way? Paul famously says in 1 Corinthians 15:14 “And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.” Is it possible that Licona and others keep insisting on debating this topic because should they ever concede the point then they would be forced to accept that Christian faith is “useless”?
This debate won’t be on the resurrection but on the accuracy of the Gospels.
Ah, well, maybe you can ask Licona which versions of Mark are “accurate,” the ones where Jesus says “Talitha kum” (improper Aramiac) or “Talitha kumi” (proper Aramaic)? From what I understand Nestle has the bad Aramaic (“Talitha kum”), which would suggest to me that scholars think the most authoritative version of Mark has bad Aramaic grammar. And, if so, one has to wonder why the most authoritative version of God’s inspired scripture would have such a blatant inaccuracy.
Do you know whether the Licona debate will be recorded or maybe even live streamed? I loved your previous debate with him and am amazed at his determined stance on literalist interpretations of belief (and his insistence that his theology is an historical method).
I don’t know!
Any plans to come to Milwaukee — or maybe Madison or Chicago? I know you were in Milwaukee not too long ago but I was out of town at the time (and I don’t think you were doing dinners then either). I think it would be great to be able to go to one of these dinners.
I suppose you prefer southern climes during the winter months. And there’s rarely enough snow (or mountains) to ski if that’s one of your pastimes.
Nothing at this point!
Hey Bart,
Come out here to SOCAL where the temps are in the 70’s and 80’s.in the winter season.
Alluring, just now, as it is 11 degrees outside my window.
There’s a blurb from you about Reza Aslan’s new book, “God, A Human History,” both on Amazon and and on the book’s jacket. Is that part of a more extensive review and if so can you suggest where I might find it?
No, I haven’t reviewed the book — just written a blurb.
I must say, you’re review of Aslan’s book is surprisingly effusive.
“Writing with all the verve and brilliance we have come to expect from his pen.”
Aslan didn’t pay you to write that, did he?
Now that you mention it, I should have asked. But yes, his writing in se is excellent.
Are you planning MSP in the near future?
Nothing just now
Bart your Canadian fans are desperate for an event! What we lack in dollar value we make up for in niceties.
Trump could never accuse you of having “low energy.”
I bet he could! 🙂
Bart: I live in the Atlanta area, and would like to attend your Feb. 21 debate with Mike Licona at Kennesaw State Universtity. Do you have contact information for where I can get tickets? Thanks.
Bernie Knight
I believe it will be free and open to the public.
Happy New Year Dr. Ehrman!!! May it continue to be healthy and joyful. I deeply appreciate being a member of your web site too. Eagerly I await the publication of the Triumph of Christianity.
Come west Dr. Ehrman: Denver.
Where does Licona sit on a scale from “the gospels are inerrant” to “the basic outline of the gospels are kind of on the right track”?
Great question. I”m not sure if he would use the term inerrancy or not. But he would be pretty *close* to it if not there already.
Fantastic another debate with Licona! I assume this will be recorded and uploaded online? I absolutely need to see this. Fantastic topic.
I attended both Naples events. In the talk, Bart contrasted paganism and Christianity, saying the exclusivity of Christianity versus the tolerance of paganism was largely responsible for one eclipsing the other (A convert to another pagan deity did not result in a loss to other pagan deities, whereas with Christianity, it was a zero-sum game: Becoming a Christian meant forsaking the pagan gods). Introduction of the belief in an afterlife with eternal consequences and the imminent judgment day were also presented as motivating factors.
I suggest that it was also the flexibility of Christianity to adopt pagan forms for its own purposes that made it easier for pagans to become Christians.
* While Christianity had only one god, it did allow for many divine beings with functional importance for the daily lives of adherents — comparable to the polytheistic religions it competed with.
* Christianity adopted Roman architectural styles (e.g. basilica) for its houses of worship and built them on former pagan sites.
* Pagan holidays were taken over by the church, the most obvious being Christmas on top of Saturnalia. All Saints Day and Saint John the Baptist Day are two others aligning with the solar calendar observed by pagans — solstices, equinoxes, and midpoints between them.
* Rites of the life cycle (hatch, match & dispatch) and related practices we think of as Christian were very similar to pagan practices. And like pagans of old, Christian priests offer blessings to farmers before planting or harvest and to fishing vessels and their crews before heading out to the life threatening oceans, offering a functional protection for daily life as was provided by pagan religions.
In sum, there is quite a bit of paganism that was brought into Christianity and should be considered in the story of the Triumph of Christianity.
In the Naples talk, Bart asked rhetorically why it matters that Christianity triumphed over paganism. His answer was that Western Civilization as we know it would not have happened without Christianity and that would have been a real shame because so many of the contributions we cherish simply could not have happened otherwise. Bart did not elaborate and seemed to offer this claim as self-evident. I’m not so sure.
Two names mentioned in particular (as we recall) were Mozart and da Vinci. My wife, who also attended the talk, is well-grounded in the arts and she tells me that the contributions of these two individuals (and their art forms in general) were very much due to developments in science and mathematics, not religion. Their patrons may have been the Christian Church. But their talents could have flowered in any environment. In fact, they might have achieved even greater heights without the limits imposed by ecclesiastical authorities. I would urge Bart to do more to defend (or even revise) his claim of why the triumph matters, because I don’t find it to be self-evident.
Bart closed the talk by saying that, besides celebrating the contributions of Christianities triumph, we should also consider what was lost and what might have been. This seemed more like an opening to a new talk than a closing statement to the talk of the evening. Perhaps it suggests the subject of the next book?
When I said that we would not have had Mozart and Leonardo without Christianity, I didn’t mean that they were heavily indebted to Christianity themselves, personally. I meant that the artistic traditions that they stood within were unthinkable without what had transpired before in the cultural history of the West, all of which was indebted to the massive influence of Christianity. That’s more true of Mozart (at least I have an easier time arguing it with respect to Mozart): the classical tradition is a direct heir of what came before and that involves the musical tradition of the middle ages, that was directly impacted by Christianity.