There is nothing better than a guest blog post that flat-out disagrees with me!  And here we have one.  Is it plausible that Jesus could have had large crowds gathering together to hear his preaching in rural Galilee?  I say: Not really.   Platinum blog member Doug Wadeson says: Oh yes! Here's his post.  What do you think?   ****************************** On those few occasions when I have challenged something Dr. Ehrman has said he can usually shoot me down pretty quickly based on his range and depth of knowledge.  But I am going to try again. Dr. Ehrman has suggested that one reason the stories of Jesus attracting and preaching to large crowds are unrealistic is because most people were too busy during the day eking out a living to be able to spend time listening to his sermons.  I have also heard him suggest that Jesus would have been too busy working as a laborer in Nazareth to have the time to travel to the city of Sepphoris, about 4 miles from Nazareth.  The significance [...]

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Reminder of the Platinum webinar this evening!  Here's the original post from last week.  I'm looking forward to hearing your feedback on this section of my (soon to be written) (we hope) book. ******************* Hey Platinums, I'm afraid I have bad news and happy I have good news.   Bad news:  We had a technical difficulty during our webinar last week on "Ethics without God," and it did not get recorded.  Ugh.  Welcome to the modern age.  But sorry 'bout that. STILL: I have good news as well.  To compensate for our loss, I'll be doing a SECOND Platinum webinar, next week Tuesday March 26; 7:30 p.m. TOPIC:  "Did Jesus Really Mean It?   The Hard (Impossible?) Ethics of the Gospels" LINK: Click here to join on Tuesday March 26 We had a great time at the last one (though there's no record of it.  So how do we *know*???).  And this coming one is, for my money (none of which is going into it), even more interesting and historically important.  (And for about 2 billion people [...]

Hey Platinums, I'm afraid I have bad news and happy I have good news.   Bad news:  We had a technical difficulty during our webinar last week on "Ethics without God," and it did not get recorded.  Ugh.  Welcome to the modern age.  But sorry 'bout that. STILL: I have good news as well.  To compensate for our loss, I'll be doing a SECOND Platinum webinar, next week Tuesday March 26; 7:30 p.m. TOPIC:  "Did Jesus Really Mean It?   The Hard (Impossible?) Ethics of the Gospels" LINK: Click here to join on Tuesday March 26 We had a great time at the last one (though there's no record of it.  So how do we *know*???).  And this coming one is, for my money (none of which is going into it), even more interesting and historically important.  (And for about 2 billion people in the world, personally important).  Hope you can come! [Note from Diane: the technical difficulty was *ME* :-( ]

Dear Platinum Members, It's time for our Quarterly Platinum Webinar.  We have scheduled it for Wednesday, March 13, 2023, at 7:30 pm. When I was a young evangelical Christian, I ran across a book called Ethics Without God.  I thought the whole idea was preposterous.  Why would there by ANY reason for being ethical if there is not God overseeing the world?  And how could we possibly have any direction for knowing how to live without divine oversight?  I held those views for a long time, and in fact when I was contemplating leaving the faith, some 30 years ago now, they haunted me.  Will I be cast to sea, with no moral compass? These last few years I've been thinking a lot about ethics: why we should behave and what right behavior might entail.  And I've been studying a wide range of answers from antiquity till today.  I've never given a webinar about this topic before.  But since it's tied up with the book I'm working on, I decided it's jolly about time!  So that's [...]

Here is an interesting reflection on the doctrine of the atonement by Platinum member Manuel Fiadeiro, for you other platinum members.  What do you think?  Do you agree with him?  Disagree?  Have an answer to his final pondering? Remember, as a Platinum member you too are allowed to make a post for other Platinums.  Do you have anything you'd like to reflect on?  Go for it! ****************************** Is it still acceptable the doctrine of atonement? The doctrine of atonement is explicitly mentioned by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:3 “Christ died for our sins”. Bart, in his lectures on Paul, gives Paul’s two Models of salvation, or two views of the atonement doctrine: The Participation Model represents the belief of the Catholic Church. The Judicial Model represents the belief of the Protestant Churches. Those are distinct interpretations of “our sins”. The Participation Model was defined by Augustine. Adam and Eve brought Sin and Death into the world by disobeying God, eating the fruit of the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil”. So, every human [...]

Dear Platinum Members, It's time for our Quarterly Platinum Webinar.  We have scheduled it for Thursday, December 14, 2023, at 7:30 pm. I've decided to go with a seasonal topic on an aspect of the Gospel birth narratives that most people have not much thought about:  could "Jesus of Nazareth" have actually been born in Nazareth, instead of Bethlehem?  Scholars have long argued so.  But on what grounds? I'll explain in my talk, we'll have questions and discussion, and then you can decide for yourself.  Hey, it's a free world!  Here's the link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/85895014121?pwd=d4YeabuDx7s5A5LTzXse3C4wQgebwV.1 I hope to see you there. Bart

What happens when a modern physician starts asking difficult questions of familiar biblical stories?  Here is one answer:  an intriguing post covering a topic that will not have occurred to most of us.  Let's think about how a Virgin Birth works when (now, unlike antiquity) we have a pretty good idea of how Births work in general.  If God made Mary pregnant through the spirit, what does that have to say about the nature of Jesus' at the biological level and, well, the chromosomes of God? This Platinum guest post is delivered to us courtesy of Platinum member Doug Wadeson.  You too can make a platinum post, on anything connected with the blog.  Interested?  Contact me about your idea, or just write a post and sent it on to us at [email protected] ****************************** Does God Have Chromosomes? The Christmas decorations are already in the stores, so it seems appropriate to start thinking about the Christmas story in the Bible. Dr. Ehrman has many posts discussing the technical difficulties of the two birth stories of Jesus [...]