Now that the government is back in business, the Smithsonian Associates has resumed its work; they sponsor lectures and lecture series in Washington D.C., every week, all the time, and I usually do a day long series of lectures for them once or twice a year, based on a book I have coming out.   I’m scheduled for the Spring 2014 in conjunction with my book How Jesus Became God.   But I’ll also be doing one this December for the English-only version of the apocryphal Gospels that is to be published by then (edited from the original-language + English version that came out last year; this new one, like the old one, was written, edited, and translated with my colleague at UNC, Zlatko Plese).

This first event is scheduled for Saturday Dec. 7; there will be four lectures, two in the morning and two in the afternoon.  It’s a killer of a day (for me at least).   But anyone in the area should consider attending.  You can get further information at their website: http://smithsonianassociates.org/ticketing/index.aspx

The following is a brief description of the lecture series, and an overview of what each lecture will cover

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The Lost Gospels

Bart D. Ehrman

In recent years readers interested in the world of early Christianity have become fascinated by the books that did not make it into the New Testament.   These other Gospels, Acts, Epistles, and Apocalypses present fascinating, if occasionally bizarre, accounts of Jesus and his followers, and even though they are, as a rule, highly fictionalized and legendary, they can inform us about how Christians in later periods were understanding their religion.   In this seminar we will look at several of the Gospels from outside the New Testament: two that deal with the birth and young life of Jesus, one that contains a number of his teachings that cannot be found in the New Testament, one that provides an alternative account of Jesus’ death and resurrection, and  several that contrast the role of an innocent Pontius Pilate and the guilty Jews in the death of Jesus.

Lecture One:  The Proto-Gospel of James and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas

                The Proto-Gospel is concerned to address the question of who Jesus’ mother was and why she was chosen to bear the son of God into the world, stressing her unique character and emphasizing her virginity when Jesus was born.   The Infancy Gospel of Thomas attempts to fill in the gaps of our knowledge about Jesus as a young boy; the driving question behind this text is this:  If Jesus was a miracle-working Son of God as an adult, what was he like as a kid?

Lecture Two:  The Gospel of Thomas

                The Gospel of Thomas is arguably the most important discovery of an ancient Christian text in modern times.   Uncovered near Nag Hammadi Egypt in 1945, the Gospel contains 114 sayings of Jesus.  Nearly half of these sayings are similar to teachings of Jesus in the New Testament, but the others strike modern readers as strange, mysterious, and mystical.  In this lecture we will discuss the meaning of this Gospel and ask whether any of its unusual teachings could actually go back to the historical Jesus.

Lecture Three: The Gospel of Peter

                It comes as a surprise to many readers to learn that the Gospels of the New Testament do not narrate the resurrection of Jesus.  But they do not: they indicate that after Jesus was buried, his women followers discovered his tomb to be empty.  But there is no account of Jesus coming out of the grave.   There is, however, in this early second century Gospel of Peter, which provides an alternative, though fragmentary, account of Jesus’ trial, death, and resurrection.

Lecture Four: The Pilate Gospels

                The Roman governor Pontius Pilate is one of the most maligned figures from the Gospels stories, but in some Christian circles he was looked upon as innocent in the death of Jesus.  In fact, as time went on, Pilate became more and more innocent, as can be seen in several Gospels from outside of the New Testament, where Pilate’s heightened innocence was used to assign all responsibility for Jesus’ death to his enemies, the Jews.   Remarkably, in some later traditions Pilate came to be portrayed as a Christian convert and, eventually, even as a Christian saint.