apocalypticism Archives - The Bart Ehrman Blog

Jesus’ Teaching About the Kingdom of God

I have explained how the idea of resurrection arose within early Judaism, and now I want to talk about the idea of afterlife in the teachings of Jesus. To begin with, I need to stress that when Jesus talked about the coming kingdom of God – the core of his apocalyptic message – he was *not* referring to what happens to a person’s soul after she or he dies. Here is how I explain Jesus’ teaching about the kingdom in my first-ever trade book for a popular audience, Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium ***************************************************** The very first thing that Jesus is recorded to have said in our very earliest surviving source involves an apocalyptic pronouncement of the coming Kingdom of God. In Mark’s Gospel, after being baptized by John and tempted by Satan in the wilderness, in neither of which is he recorded as having said anything, Jesus comes into Galilee with an urgent message: The time is filled up and the Kingdom of God is almost here; repent and believe in the [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T01:59:31-04:00September 27th, 2017|Afterlife, Historical Jesus, Public Forum|

A Resurrection for Tortured Jews (2 Maccabees)

I have pointed out that the notion of “resurrection” first appears in Jewish writings in the book of Daniel, and I am arguing that this notion is intrinsically connected with the apocalyptic view of the world that developed at the time. In this view of the world, as I’ve laid it out on the blog before (e.g.: https://ehrmanblog.org/the-rise-of-apocalypticism/) the people of God suffer *not* necessarily because God is punishing them for their sins but because there are forces of evil in the world aligned against God and his people who are wreaking havoc among the faithful. But after this life, God will raise his faithful from the dead and reward them for their fidelity to his law. This view can be found in the apocalypses that began to be written around the time of Daniel and then for the next several centuries first among Jews and then among Christians, such books as 1 Enoch, 4 Ezra, 2 Baruch and the New Testament book of Revelation (see further: https://ehrmanblog.org/a-new-genre-in-jewish-antiquity-the-apocalypse/) But aspects of this view could be [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T02:04:22-04:00August 17th, 2017|Afterlife, Early Judaism, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Public Forum|

A New Genre in Jewish Antiquity: The Apocalypse

I am in midst of starting to explain how a new view of the afterlife came into existence in Jewish circles right around the time of the Maccabean revolt, and to that end I have devoted one post to a brief narrative of what happened leading up to the revolt and a second post to two of our principal sources of information about it, 1 and 2 Maccabees. Now, I need to provide yet more background: it was at this time, and in this context, that a new genre of literature appeared within ancient Judaism, the “apocalypse.” As we will see, the first Jewish apocalypse we have is in the book of Daniel, the final book of the Hebrew Bible to be written. To understand Daniel (and its view of the afterlife) it is important to know something about the conventions of its literary genre. That’s what I will explain in this post, in terms taken (with only a little editing) from my textbook The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction. ******************************************************* Apocalypse as a [...]

BDEhrman2021-02-23T01:30:44-05:00July 30th, 2017|Early Judaism, Forgery in Antiquity, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Public Forum|

Background to The Christian Afterlife: The Maccabean Revolt: A Blast from the (Recent) Past!

Back in April I was in the middle of a thread about the afterlife, and now, after this unusual hiatus, I am able and eager to return to it. For those of you who were with us at the time, you may remember that this is the topic of the book I am working on now, that I have been reading massively about for most of the past year. My views have developed, changed, and deepened since April. I've had lots and lots of interesting ideas and thoughts, as I have pondered ancient sources (Greek, Roman, Jewish, and Christian) some of which I will be explaining over the course of this thread. In the thread to this point I have discussed how the afterlife was conceptualized in the ancient Israelite sources found in the Hebrew Bible. The basic story, for those of you who don't recall or who are not inclined to reread the posts from earlier in the year, is that for most of the Hebrew Bible, the place of the dead was Sheol, [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T02:07:13-04:00July 27th, 2017|Afterlife, Early Judaism, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Public Forum|

Apocalypticism in a Modern Idiom

As I pointed out some weeks ago on the blog, in the mid to late 1980s, as a liberal Christian, I was fully aware that the Bible was filled with mythological views that could no longer be accepted as literal truths but had to be translated into a modern idiom if they were to have any relevance. And I thought that the Bible did have relevance. But not in its literal sense. This made interpretation of the Bible an extremely important affair. It was the *interpretation* of the text that determined how, in what sense and in what way, the Bible could and should determine how a person understood the world, the deity, and our relationship to both (the world and the deity). The teachings of Jesus, the writings of Paul, and in fact most of the earliest Christian tradition as found in the New Testament, was rooted in apocalyptic views that were very much situated in their own time and place, but were no longer tenable for 20th century Americans (i.e., for me in [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T02:08:48-04:00July 17th, 2017|Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

The Essence of Biblical Apocalyptic Thought

I earlier pointed out that my views of suffering in the 1980s were heavily influenced by the biblical perspective that scholars call apocalypticism. I have discussed the major views of apocalypticism on the blog a couple of times over the years, but some review would be useful at this point, both for those whose memories are as sieve-like as mine, and for those who weren’t around yet for all those years of previous fun on the blog. Let me stress, Jewish apocalypticism was a very common view in Jesus’ day – it was the view of the Essenes who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls, of the Pharisees, of John the Baptist, later of the Apostle Paul – and almost certainly of Jesus. This is a widely held view among critical scholars – by far the majority view for over a century, since the writings of none other than Albert Schweitzer. What did early Jewish apocalypticists believe? Let me break it down into four component themes. I have drawn this discussion from my textbook on the [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T02:09:13-04:00July 13th, 2017|Early Judaism, Historical Jesus, Public Forum|

The Origins of Apocalypticism

In my previous post I began to explain how, in 1985, while teaching a class at Rutgers on the Problem of Suffering, I came to realize that I simply didn't accept any longer most of the views of the Bible on why there was suffering in the world. But one view did continue to appeal to me, the apocalyptic view that emerged toward the end of the New Testament period, and became the view of Jesus, John the Baptist before him, the apostle Paul after him, and, in fact, most of the early Christians. This would be a good time to review where this view came from and what motivated it. For that I am going to return to a post that I made on the blog a couple of years ago. Here I set up what apocalypticists believed (especially about suffering) by contrasting it with the view out of which it arose and to which it was reacting, the view of the traditional Hebrew prophets. ********************************************************************** The Prophetic Perspective We have seen that the [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T02:09:21-04:00July 11th, 2017|Early Judaism, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

Explaining a Columbian Mudslide

During the term when I was teaching my class on the problem of suffering at Rutgers in 1985, one of those unthinkable natural disasters occurred that made headline news and disturbed all caring people around the world. The night before there had been a volcanic incident in Columbia that caused a mudslide that wiped out several villages, killing thousands of people in their sleep. The death toll in the end was 23,000, men women and children. Some people blamed the Columbian government – they shouldn’t have allowed these villages to be near a volcano. Fair enough I suppose. You have to blame *someone*. And who can blame a volcano? But why do disasters like this have to happen in the first place? And how do people who believe in the God of the Bible account for such things? Blaming government officials for a volcanic eruption seems a bit lame. And it didn’t occur to most of us at the time, as we were reading accounts in the papers. Instead, our reactions were “Oh my God! [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T02:09:33-04:00July 10th, 2017|Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

Background to a Different View of the Afterlife: The Maccabean Revolt

The views about the afterlife found in the Hebrew Bible are not, by and large, replicated in the New Testament. A new view had developed in Judaism by that time, rooted in the ideology known as "apocalypticism," which I have talked about before on the blog. Ideologies do not arise in a vacuum of course, but are responses to concrete historical, social, and cultural forces, events, and situations. To make sense of the Jewish notion of "resurrection" (the dominant view of what the afterlife would involve in the New Testament -- in contrast to the Old Testament) it is important to know what socio-political events led to it. And so here is a very brief sketch of the history of Judea over the four hundred years from approximately 540 BCE, when the Persians were in control, up to 63 BCE, when the Romans came in and took over. I’ve taken the sketch from my textbook, The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction. ************************************************************************** The Later History of Judea In the Persian period (starting in [...]

BDEhrman2020-06-03T15:33:18-04:00April 21st, 2017|Early Judaism, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Public Forum|

The Apocalyptic Background to Jesus’ Messiahship

To make sense of my claim that Jesus himself told the disciples that he thought he was the messiah, I have to set his teachings generally in a wider context. As I have repeatedly argued on the blog, Jesus’ teachings are best understood as apocalyptic in nature, and to understand any of them it is important to remember what the world view we call Jewish apocalypticism entailed. This is essential background to the question I’m pursuing, since I will be maintaining that Jesus did indeed consider himself the messiah, and said so to his disciples, but he meant this in a completely apocalyptic sense. So, to set the stage for my consideration of the messianic self-teaching of Jesus, I need to provide a quick refresher course on Jewish apocalypticism. Here is what I said in an earlier post on the matter. ****************************************************************** Jewish apocalypticism was a very common view in Jesus’ day – it was the view of the Essenes who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls, of the Pharisees, of John the Baptist, later of [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T02:52:14-04:00November 20th, 2016|Early Judaism, Historical Jesus, Public Forum|

(Later) Early Christian Understandings of Heaven and Hell

Yesterday I gave Part One of a two-part discussion of the “invention” of heaven and hell, from my book Jesus Interrupted. There I sketched out the apocalyptic vision of what would happen at the end of time as the original view among the followers of Jesus. Here is where I continue that discussion into some reflections of where the Christian teachings of the afterlife, as later formulated, came from. ********************************************** The Transformation of the Apocalyptic Vision What happens when this expected end doesn’t happen? What happens when the apocalyptic scenario that Jesus expected to occur in “this generation” never comes? When Paul’s expectation that he will be alive at the second coming of Christ is radically disconfirmed by his own death? When the resurrection of the dead is delayed, interminably, making a mockery of the widespread belief that it will happen “soon”? One thing that happens, of course, is that some people begin to mock. That is the problem addressed in the final book of the New Testament to be written, 2 Peter, which [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T03:02:05-04:00October 10th, 2016|Afterlife, Book Discussions, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

Jesus and Paul on Heaven and Hell

A couple of days ago I indicated on the blog that I am thinking about devoting my next book to the “Invention of the Afterlife” – that is, to the question of where the Christian doctrines of heaven and hell came come. I asked for comments (and I still welcome them) from people about what they would be interested in seeing in a book like that. Many, many thanks to everyone who has (so far!) responded to my request! As some of you know, I have already written a *bit* about the topic in an earlier book, Jesus Interrupted. I thought it might be useful to replay what I said there, just to show where my thinking is at this point (I haven’t developed my thoughts significantly from writing that book, published in 2009) (but I expect they will develop in a big way, once I start working more diligently on the question). Here is the first half of what I said there. The second half will come tomorrow. (For those of you who keep [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T03:02:17-04:00October 9th, 2016|Afterlife, Book Discussions, Historical Jesus, Paul and His Letters, Public Forum|

Debate with a Mythicist! And the Book of Revelation. Readers’ Mailbag September 25, 2016

In this week’s Mailbag I’ll be addressing two questions, one about me personally – my preparations for the upcoming debate with Robert Price on the question of whether Jesus even existed as a human being – and the other about the book of Revelation. If you have a question you would like me to address on the Mailbag, simply ask it in a comment on this post or any other. ************************************************************************ QUESTION It seems the debate between yourself and Robert Price will be going ahead next month, right? I follow Price on Facebook and he has evidently been re-reading all your books in preparation. How much of his books do you intend on reading prior to the debate? How will you prepare for the debate? I’m really looking forward to it! RESPONSE Right! Yes indeed! On October 21 I will be having a three-hour debate in Milwaukee with Robert Price, who has two PhDs from Drew University, one in New Testament Studies and the other in Theology, and who is an atheist who supports [...]

BDEhrman2019-03-20T17:51:16-04:00September 25th, 2016|Bart's Debates, Canonical Gospels, Mythicism, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions, Reflections and Ruminations, Revelation of John|

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 [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T03:28:05-04:00August 3rd, 2016|Canonical Gospels, Public Forum, Revelation of John|

Were Jesus’ Followers Crazy? Was He? Mailbag June 4, 2016

I’ll be dealing with two questions in this week’s Readers Mailbag, both dealing, as it turns out, with issues related to psychology and the early Christian movement: one has to do with why the followers of Jesus didn’t simply give up and disband when the end-of-the-world-apocalypse they had been anticipating didn’t happen (so that they were proven to be *wrong*) and the other about whether Jesus was, literally, crazy. Interesting questions! If you have one you would like me to address, just ask in a comment on any of my posts. QUESTION I get that when the Apocalypse didn’t happen as the apocalyptic Jesus had predicted that a kind of reinterpretation of events including the resurrection took place. But why? Why didn’t the fledgling fringe then Jesus-Jewish (my term) sect simply die out? RESPONSE Ah, this is a meaty question that someone could write a book about. In fact, people have written books about it! I won’t give a definitive answer here, but will instead mention just one book – now a classic [...]

BDEhrman2022-07-03T16:12:13-04:00June 4th, 2016|Historical Jesus, History of Christianity (100-300CE), Public Forum|

Jesus and the Son of Man

Over the past few weeks, as I have been talking about the rise of Jewish apocalypticism, in relation to the historical Jesus, a number of readers have asked me to explain what I think about the “Son of Man” in the sayings of Jesus Jesus. Did Jesus call himself the son of man? If so, what did he mean? And if not, what did he mean? As it turns out, these are some of the most complex, convoluted, and confounding questions confronting scholars of the historical Jesus. Many books, some of them big and dense, have been written on the issue. There are lots of opinions about it. Here I’ll try to explain my view, and try to justify it. The following is taken from my book Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium ***************************************************************** The Coming Son of Man Among the most heated, and least enlightening, debates among New Testament scholars has been the question of the origins of the phrase “the Son of Man” in the teachings of Jesus. Everyone agrees -- since [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T03:55:05-04:00January 21st, 2016|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus, Reader’s Questions|

The Rise of Apocalypticism

Now, with all the background out of the way, I am able to explain where the apocalyptic worldview came from. I am maintaining that it emerged out of the classical view of the Hebrew prophets, as historical circumstances forced thinkers in Israel to re-evaluate what the prophets had said. Here is the simple version of the story, as I lay it out in my textbook on the Bible ********************************************************************** The Prophetic Perspective We have seen that the classical prophets of the Hebrew Bible differed from one another in a number of ways, in the historical contexts that they addressed, in their manner of addressing them, and in the specifics of their messages. But there are certain common features that tie all the prophets together, especially with respect to their understanding of God, his reaction to Israel’s failure to do his will, and the coming disasters that will occur as a result. If you were to ask a prophet like Amos, Isaiah, or Jeremiah why it is the people of God suffer, they would have a [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T03:55:13-04:00January 18th, 2016|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Public Forum|

Background to Apocalypticism: The Maccabean Revolt

OK, I’m back to my discussion of where Jewish apocalypticism came from. So far I have laid out the understandings of the Jewish prophets, focusing on Amos (from the 8th century BCE). Now I need to explain why the “prophetic” views came to change. To make sense of the change I have to sketch a set of historical events that the people of Israel had to live through. Some people find these kinds of historical sketches fascinating; others find them dull as dirt. But in either event, you really have to know what happened among ancient Jews in order to make sense of what their theological beliefs were, since these beliefs were molded by and informed by nothing so much as the historical context out of which they emerged. And so here is a very brief sketch of the history of Judea over the four hundred years from approximately 540 BCE, when the Persians were in control, up to 63 BCE, when the Romans came in and took over. I’ve taken the sketch from my [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T03:55:34-04:00January 15th, 2016|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament|

Heaven and Hell, Part Two

In my previous post I explained how Jewish thinkers began to develop the idea of an afterlife when they devised the idea of a future resurrection of the dead, an apocalyptic event that explained how God would ultimately make right all that was wrong, rewarding those who had sided with him but punishing those who sided with evil. But how did that idea of a future *bodily* resurrection morph into the Christian teachings of heaven and hell? I try to explain that here in this post, once again as taken from my book Jesus Interrupted. The first two paragraphs are repeated from yesterday’s post, to provide a better context for what I say here. **************************************************************************** Thus, eternal life, for Jesus, Paul, and the earliest Christians, was a life lived in the body, not above in heaven, but down here, where we are now. Paul emphasizes this point strenuously in the book of 1 Corinthians. The fact that Jesus’ body was raised from the dead shows what the future resurrection would involve. It would involve bodies [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T03:57:17-04:00January 6th, 2016|Afterlife, History of Christianity (100-300CE), Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

Heaven and Hell, Part One

As I have been discussing the topic of resurrection in early Christianity, a number of readers have asked about a related issue, namely, where the Christian teaching of heaven and hell came from. For most Christians, the afterlife seems to be the ongoing existence of the soul. But for the earliest Christians, the afterlife involved the resurrection precisely of the *body*. How did that change, and why? I discussed this issue some years back in my book Jesus Interrupted, and what I say about it there seems to be directly on target for what these readers have asked. And so I include it here. This will take two posts, the first one (today) to explain why “resurrection” came to be believed by Jews and eventually by Christians and the next post to explain how that belief in resurrection came to be transformed into the later idea of heaven and hell that may people today continue to subscribe to. ********************************************************************* Heaven and Hell In some parts of Christendom today, especially the parts that I was [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T03:57:32-04:00January 5th, 2016|Afterlife, History of Christianity (100-300CE), Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|