Paul Archives - Page 6 of 6 - The Bart Ehrman Blog

Women in the Churches of Paul

QUESTION: Looking back to June 14 you listed 7 topics you were discussing at the Apocrypha Seminar at the National Humanities Center. I don't believe we have discussed much of anything on feminism. It seems a broad subject for rich discussion. Were women disenfranchised later or were they denied any major roll right from the start? Of course, Dan Brown could be brought into the subject! RESPONSE: I’ll probably keep Dan Brown out of it! J Well, unless I feel inspired to talk a bit about Mary Magdalene and what we really do and don’t know about her, later on. But maybe it would be good to devote a few posts to the question of women in the early church. Our earliest author, of course, is Paul, and Paul’s views of women are widely misunderstood. In my NT course I have every student participate, as part of their grade, in a formal debate on this or that topic. The topics are meant to be controversial, and one of them, years ago, was “Resolved: The [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-30T12:27:35-04:00July 26th, 2013|Paul and His Letters, Reader’s Questions, Women in Early Christianity|

Paul’s Chronology

QUESTION: Could you give some of the clues scholars have regarding the dating of Paul's letters? RESPONSE: This seems like it ought to be an easy question to answer, a real softball. But it’s not; it’s a tough one, a hard curve. Different scholars have different likes and dislikes within their own fields. Most New Testament scholars, for example, do not enjoy doing textual criticism – the reconstruction of the oldest attainable form of the text based on our surviving manuscripts. In fact, most are not trained in it and want nothing to do with it. When I started in my career, on the other hand, that was the one thing I was completely passionate about. Different strokes for different folks. There are some scholars who want nothing to do with the Synoptic Problem, and others who have worked on it for thirty years. And there are scholars who simply cannot get interested in establishing a chronology of Paul’s life and letters, and others who want to do almost nothing else. I’m afraid when [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T18:22:40-04:00July 10th, 2013|Paul and His Letters, Reader’s Questions|

Would Matthew and Paul Have Seen Eye-to-Eye

One of my major goals as a professor of New Testament is to get my students to understand that the NT is not a single entity with a solid and consistent message. There are numerous authors who were writing at different times, in different parts of the world, to different audiences, and with different – sometimes strikingly different – understandings about important issues. In fact, about key issues, such as who Jesus was and what his role was in salvation. One of the assignments that I used to give was to have students compare Matthew’s view of salvation with that found in Paul. Specifically, what is the role of doing what the Law demands and of doing good deeds? If someone abides by the law and does good deeds for others – will that bring about salvation? The way I get them to think about those questions is by looking at two passages, one in Matthew and the other in Paul. The first is Matthew’s version of the “rich young ruler” (he’s actually not a [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T18:22:59-04:00July 7th, 2013|Canonical Gospels, Paul and His Letters, Reader’s Questions|

Gentile Judaizers

I ended my last post with a question: Suppose Matthew really did think a person had to be a Jew in order to be a follower of Jesus. Would that indicate that he himself was born and raised a Jew? In this case I think there is a clear and certain answer. But it may not be the answer you’d expect. I think the answer is certainly No. The reason is that we know of other Christians in the early church who insisted that to be a follower of Jesus, one had to adopt the ways of Judaism. And these other Christians were themselves born and raised pagan. The clearest instance involves Paul’s opponents in Galatia. Paul’s letter to the Galatians is one of the most dense and difficult writings of the New Testament. There are verses and even passages that are, in my opinion, virtually impenetrable, statements that Paul makes that I still have difficulty figuring out after years of thinking and reading about it. But the basic situation that prompted the letter, in [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T18:23:10-04:00July 5th, 2013|Canonical Gospels, Early Judaism, Paul and His Letters, Reader’s Questions|

More on Judas

Several people misunderstood what I was trying to say in my post yesterday about Paul’s knowledge of Judas Iscariot. It was probably my fault for not being clear enough. I was *not*, decidedly *not*, trying to argue that the tradition that Judas betrayed Jesus was unhistorical. Quite the contrary, for reasons I’ll explain in a second, I think this is a completely historical tradition. I was simply asking whether Paul himself knew about it. He may well have known about it. But he gives no indication in his surviving writings that he did – either because he was in fact ignorant about it, or because he assumed his readers already knew all they needed to know about it, or because he had no occasion to bring it up in his surviving letters, or for some other reason. But I do indeed think that – whatever Paul did or did not know about the matter – that Jesus was betrayed by one of his own, Judas Iscariot. In my judgment, this tradition passes all of our [...]

BDEhrman2020-05-22T09:46:35-04:00May 24th, 2013|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus, Reader’s Questions|

Paul on Judas

Several people have asked me to comment on whether Paul shows any evidence of knowing about the tradition that Jesus was betrayed by Judas Iscariot. As a first step, it’s necessary to point out that Paul says very little indeed – surprisingly little – about the historical Jesus -- that is, about what Jesus said, did, and experienced between the time of his birth and his death. (Paul obviously says a *lot* about Jesus’ death and resurrection, just not much about his life.) The following are about the only things he tells us: Jesus was born of a woman (Gal 4:4) He was born a Jew (Gal 4:4) He had brothers (1 Cor. 9:5); one of whom was James (Gal 1-2) He ministered to Jews (Rom 15:8) He had twelve disciples (1 Cor. 15:6) He held a last supper the last night of his life (1 Cor. 11:22-24) Paul indicates what Jesus said at that meal. Paul indicates two other teachings of Jesus: that Christian ministers should be paid for their work and that Christians [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T18:30:32-04:00May 23rd, 2013|Historical Jesus, Paul and His Letters, Reader’s Questions|

Jesus’ Appearance to the 500

QUESTION on 1 Corinthians 15:3-5: "3 For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, 4 and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. 6 Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters[c] at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. 8 Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. " Where do you think he got his information from especially on the 500? Many say it could only have come from Peter or James or else he made it up, which would be odd. RESPONSE: It’s a great question, and as with many great questions, I don’t think there’s a great answer. There are several things we can say. Paul [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T18:30:47-04:00May 21st, 2013|Paul and His Letters, Reader’s Questions|

Paul’s View of Jesus as an Angel

Let's look at Paul's view of Jesus as an Angel. Here's a bit from chapter 7 of How Jesus Became God where I talk about why I think Paul understood Jesus, before coming to earth, to have been an angel. There's more to the argument than just this, but it's a start. As you'll see, this isn't just a crazy idea I had. I learned this from some very smart colleagues in the field, who have convinced me. It's one of the HUGE surprises that I've had writing this book, coming to this realization. It affects a LOT in terms of New Testament interpretation. Did Paul Think Jesus was an Angel? Many people no doubt have the same experience I do on occasion, of reading something numerous times, over and over, and not having it register. I have read Paul’s letter to the Galatians literally hundreds of times in both English and Greek. But the clear import of what Paul says in Galatians 4:14 simply never registered with me, until, frankly, a few months ago. [...]

BDEhrman2022-06-13T11:14:57-04:00April 11th, 2013|Book Discussions, Paul and His Letters|

Paul’s Christology

A small bit from my now chapter 7: ********************************************************************************************************************** I have read, pondered, researched, taught, and written about the writings of Paul for forty years, but until recently there was one key aspect of his theology that I could never quite get my mind around. I had the hardest time understanding how, exactly, he viewed Christ. Some aspects of Paul’s Christological teaching have been clear to me for decades – especially his teaching that it was Jesus’ death and resurrection that makes a person right with God, rather than following the dictates of the Jewish law. But who did Paul think Christ was exactly? One reason for my perplexity was that Paul is highly allusive in what he says. He does not spell out, in systematic detail, what his views of Christ are. Another reason was that in some passages Paul seems to affirm a view of Christ that – until recently – I thought could not possibly be as early as Paul’s letters, which are our first Christian writings to survive. How could Paul [...]

BDEhrman2017-12-31T23:17:05-05:00April 10th, 2013|Paul and His Letters, Public Forum|

Final Thoughts on the Philippians Christ-Poem

There is a whole lot more that could be said about the Christ-poem in Philippians 2. You could literally write an entire book on just this passage. In fact, people *have* written books on just this passage. The most important one, a classic in the field, is by Ralph Martin, A Hymn of Christ (which in earlier editions was called Carmen Christi) (which is a Latin phrase that, unsurprisingly, means A Hymn of Christ :-) ). This passage has had more ink spilled over it by scholars over the last century than almost any other in the entire Bible (with the exception of John 1:1-18). In any event, to make sense of what I want to say here, it would help, if you haven’t done so, to read the other posts I’ve made on it. Here I just want to mention briefly an interpretation that is sometimes floated for the passage which takes it in a very different way indeed, as not being about incarnation at all. In this alternative interpretation, the passage is not [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T18:47:46-04:00February 21st, 2013|Book Discussions, Early Christian Doctrine, Paul and His Letters|

The Pre-pauline “Poem” in Philippians 2

In my most recent post on Christology I began to speak about the “incarnation” Christology found famously in Paul’s letter to the Philippians, 2:6-11. There are a lot of other things I want to say about this passage, all of them relevant to the issues I’ve been discussing. The first and most important thing is that it has been widely recognized by scholars for a very long time that this passage is something that Paul appears to be quoting, that it is not simply part of the prose letter. Moreover, it is frequently called (probably wrongly) a “hymn” (that’s probably wrong because – as I’ve been told by an expert in the field of ancient music, it doesn’t actually scan as music). But in any event, it is highly structured in a balanced fashion and thus seems to be more like a poem than like prose. The reasons for thinking that Paul is quoting rather than composing it are pretty compelling, and I will get to them eventually. For now I want to point out [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T18:48:13-04:00February 18th, 2013|Book Discussions, Early Christian Doctrine, Paul and His Letters|

Incarnation Christology, Angels, and Paul

In my posts on Christology so far I have argued that different Christians in the early decades of the Christian movement maintained that Jesus had been exalted to a divine status at some point of his existence – at his resurrection, at his baptism, at his birth. I have called this a christology from below, or an “exaltation” christology; it is sometimes called a low christology because it understands Jesus to have started out as a human (down here with us) and to have been raised to a divine status. In this view he was not God from eternity past or a pre-existent being. He was a human being who was taken up to the level of divinity at some point (or, in the case of the Virgin Birth, that he came into existence at a point in time as a person who was partially human partially divine). But there was another kind of Christology which was also very early – earlier, in fact, than our earliest surviving Christian writer, Paul. This is the view [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T18:48:28-04:00February 14th, 2013|Book Discussions, Early Christian Doctrine, Paul and His Letters|

Paul’s “Gospel” and Marcion

Question: (Here is a question that has been raised about one of my posts. The question begins with a quotation from what I said, in contrast to something else I said, which seems to contradict it. Far be it from me every to eschew contradictions! :) But in this case, I have been misunderstood, probably because of the poor way I phrased it. A couple of people have asked me about the same thing, so here’s the gist of their questions, in the form of one iteration). “The apostle Paul – well-connected and well-traveled and familiar with lots of churches – shows no knowledge that such a thing as Gospels exist.” I should have asked you about this earlier. I was surprised when, back in a post on Marcion, you said the other “gospel” Paul talked about was “a version of our Gospel of Luke.” Would you explain? RESPONSE: OK, so how can I have it both ways? How can I say that Paul did not know about any Gospels AND say that Marcion used [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T19:05:48-04:00January 6th, 2013|Heresy and Orthodoxy, History of Christianity (100-300CE), Paul and His Letters, Reader’s Questions|

Paul and the Resurrection of the “Flesh”?

QUESTIONS: But what is a BODILY resurrection without the flesh? And doesn’t this indicate that the flesh (the corpse) didn’t matter anymore and could be left behind, rotting and decomposing? Isn’t it all about the spirit finally getting this new, better, perfect, divine ‘body’? Addendum: The Greek for ‘spiritual’ (like in spiritual body) is pneumatikos, right? According to Strong’s that means: pertaining to wind or breath, windy, exposed to the wind, blowing. Now those wouldn’t be obvious words to describe something physical or made out of matter, would it? They seems to rather define something ‘intangible’ RESPONSE: OK, I’ve been getting a lot of questions along these lines (some on the blog itself). So I need to try to clarify the whole matter. It’s not easy, for a variety of reasons. But I’ll do my best. First thing to stress: the ancient apocalyptic view of the human that Paul had is not the view of the human that WE have. This is one instance where it becomes crystal clear that we have to try to [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T19:19:05-04:00October 9th, 2012|Afterlife, Paul and His Letters, Reader’s Questions|

Paul’s View of Resurrection

QUESTIONS: So if, as you say, Paul believed in a 'physical resurrection of the body ( = of the corpse, right?) of Jesus' then why did he never refer to an empty tomb or to the discovery of such an empty tomb by the apostles in his letters although that would have fitted well at occasions? Also, and I know we have discussed these matters briefly here before, why did Paul describe the 'risen Christ' as a light etc in his visions? And not as a humanoid? And if that 'transformed' body was so different from the normal, natural body humans have then why assume the corpse was actually needed in the first place to get 'resurrected' in this new one (and if a corpse is needed then what about corpses that have been totally decomposed?)? Why is it Paul's aim to get away from the physical body that he himself is currently living in (as he mentions in some of his letters)? Why does Paul then contrast the 'natural' body to the 'spiritual' body? [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T19:20:17-04:00October 6th, 2012|Afterlife, Paul and His Letters, Reader’s Questions|

Paul in Acts: Part 3

I mentioned in my previous posts that there are discrepancies between Paul’s letters and the book of Acts in both major and minor ways, and in my last post I dealt with some differences that appear when one looks closely at the details (the issue I addressed: what does Paul do immediately upon his conversion). There are many instances like that throughout Acts: if you compare what Paul has to say with what Acts has to say, on the same topic or about the same event, you will find differences, and often these differences matter a lot to the overall narrative. There are also of differences that emerge from the overall portrayal of Paul and his Christian mission. In this post I’ll deal with one example, and in a future post with one other. For this Post: Paul and the Other Apostles. One big area of interest is Paul’s relationship with those were apostles before him. This consists principally of the former disciples of Jesus (Peter, John, etc.) and Jesus’ own brother James, who was [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-17T13:35:16-04:00July 24th, 2012|Acts of the Apostles, Paul and His Letters, Reader’s Questions|

Paul in Acts: Part 2

My post on the portrayal of Paul in Acts generated a considerable response, so I thought maybe I should say a few more words about this issue in another post – or in a series of posts, if need be. Some responses have suggested that maybe “Luke” (we don’t know the author’s real name, so we may as well call him this) had sources of information available to him for the book of Acts, just as he clearly did for the Gospel (e.g., the Gospels of Mark and Q). I think this is absolutely right, he almost certainly did have sources. Otherwise he would have had to make everything up himself, and I don’t think there’s any way that happened. There are too many close parallels to what Paul has to say about himself -- even though on closer look, in almost all these parallels there are striking discrepancies; so Luke had sources, but the sources were not completely reliable; and he altered them as he saw fit. FOR THE REST OF THIS POST, log [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-16T13:05:33-04:00July 22nd, 2012|Acts of the Apostles, Paul and His Letters, Reader’s Questions|

Paul the Persecutor and the Historical Jesus

QUESTION: You mention in your book "Did Jesus Exist?" that Paul started his persecution of Christians in the early 30s. If he was tasked with hunting down Christians by the Sanhedrin he must have had a fairly high position among the Sanhedrin (I don't mean that he was a member). How come he didn't witness the crucifixion or why didn’t he in some way have firsthand knowledge of the events in immediate connection with the crucifixion? RESPONSE: Ah, an interesting question. So, it’s part of a much, much larger issue. Let me explain. We have two sources of information about the life of Paul: his own letters and the book of Acts. There are lots of reasons for thinking that the book of Acts is not always reliable when it comes to describing events in Paul’s life. I may devote an entire post – or maybe even a series of posts – to the question. For now, suffice it to say that whenever you can compare what Paul has to say about his own [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-17T13:22:45-04:00July 20th, 2012|Acts of the Apostles, Historical Jesus, Paul and His Letters, Reader’s Questions|

Q & A with Ben Witherington: Part 4

CONTINUATION! Ben Witherington, a conservative evangelical Christian New Testament scholar, has asked me to respond to a number of questions about my book Did Jesus Exist, especially in light of criticism I have received for it (not, for the most part, from committed Christians!). His blog is widely read by conservative evangelicals, and he has agreed to post the questions and my answers without editing, to give his readers a sense of why I wrote the book, what I hoped to accomplish by it, and what I would like them to know about it. He has graciously agreed to allow me to post my responses here on my blog, which, if I’m not mistaken, has a very different readership (although there is undoubtedly some overlap). It’s a rather long set of questions and answers – over 10,000 words. So I will post them in bits and pieces so as not to overwhelm anyone. The Q’s are obviously his, the A’s mine. Some of Ben Witherington’s most popular books are The Jesus Quest, and The Problem with [...]

BDEhrman2020-12-17T23:45:24-05:00June 13th, 2012|Bart's Critics, Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus, Mythicism, Paul and His Letters|

More on the Resurrection

As I pointed out in the previous posting, we cannot know that there was an empty tomb three days after Jesus’ death. We also cannot know which of his twelve disciples came to believe that he had been raised from the dead, or when they started to believe it. They later indicated that he was raised on the third day, as Paul, a later Christian who knew some of the disciples, tells us in 1 Corinthians 15:3-5. But Paul does not indicate that the disciples of Jesus started to believe that it was three days after Jesus’ death that his disciples started to believe he had been raised –only that that was the day on which he was raised. They may have come to realize it weeks later. The Gospels, written decades after Paul, indicate that the disciples came to believe on the third day. And it indicates that they all (except Judas Iscariot, of course) came to believe. I don’t know if that is historically right or not. There are a lot of Christian [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T19:45:55-04:00April 28th, 2012|Afterlife, Canonical Gospels, Paul and His Letters, Reader’s Questions|

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