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Video: Ehrman & Evans 2012 Debate – Part 2

A couple of weeks ago I posted a debate that I had with Craig Evans, an evangelical Christian New Testament scholar.   That debate was held at Saint Mary's University in Nova Scotia.   The next night we had a second debate -- on the same topic (!) but in a different location, at Acadia University, where Craig currently teaches in the Acadia Divinity College.   The topic, again, was "Does the New Testament Present a Historically Reliable Portrait of Jesus." I was hesitant to post this debate on the blog, since it's on the same topic as the other one.   But I watched it and saw that I actually make my case differently this time, as does he.   So, what the heck -- you can start watching it and if it sounds like old hat, you can stop!  But in a way it's interesting how we changed our presentations, in no small measure because we had heard the night before what they other guy was going to argue.... Please adjust gear icon for 720p High-Definition: See first video [...]

2017-09-16T22:16:57-04:00December 5th, 2013|Bart's Debates, Historical Jesus, Public Forum, Video Media|

Is The NT Portrayal of Jesus Accurate? Debate With Craig Evans

This video is of a debate that I participated in nearly two years ago in Nova Scotia with Dr. Craig Evans, a very well-known and widely published scholar of the New Testament who is also a conservative  evangelical Christian (not “ultra-conservative,” and nowhere near a fundamentalist – but still conservative).  He is the author of Jesus and His World: The Archaeological Evidence and Fabricating Jesus: How Modern Scholars Distort the Gospels. This was the first of two debates that took place, in two different locations,on subsequent evenings.   The topic of the debate was: “Does the New Testament Present a Reliable Portrait of the Historical Jesus.”   As you might imagine, Craig Evans argues that Yes, it does.  I argue that No, it does not.   Both of us, naturally enough, focus our attention on the four Gospels of the New Testament.   We each gave an opening speech of 30 minutes; and then we had a chance for a rebuttal, followed by some Q & A. I have to say, this was one of  the favorite debates that I [...]

2020-04-29T17:09:05-04:00November 17th, 2013|Bart's Debates, Historical Jesus, Public Forum, Video Media|

Video: Forgery in the New Testament

On Monday, March 21, 2011, I gave a lecture at the San Francisco Commonwealth Club of California, underwritten by The Bernard Osher Foundation. The moderator was Alan Jones, Dean Emeritus, Grace Cathedral. Below is a link to the lecture. I gave the lecture soon after my book Forged: Writing in the Name of God. Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are appeared. In that book I try to present, to a lay audience, the evidence that scholars have found compelling that not only are some books *outside* the New Testament written (falsely) in the names of the apostles (for example, the Gospel of Peter, the Gospel of Thomas, the Apocalypse of Paul, and so on: these were not really written by Peter, Thomas, or Paul, as everyone agrees) but also books written *inside* the New Testament. This does not apply to "anonymous" books, where an author does not provide his name (e.g., Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John -- the authors themselves do not say who they are, it was only later [...]

2020-04-11T17:19:22-04:00November 8th, 2013|Book Discussions, Forgery in Antiquity, Video Media|

Video: Misquoting Jesus

I have decided to add a new feature to my blog.   There have been a number of video's recorded of my lectures and interviews, and I thought it might be interesting to post these on occasion here on the blog combined with my added comments. My most successful popular book so far has been Misquoting Jesus.   After it was out for a while and finally "took off," I got asked to give a bunch of lectures on the topic.  In fact, I still *do* give lectures on the topic.  Well, usually, it's the same lecture!   So I won't be posting every one of them -- one is enough.   This is one of the earlier ones I did, at Stanford University on April 25, 2007.   This was part of Stanford's Heyns Lecture Series.   The lecture was given at  Cubberley Auditorium, Stanford University Campus.   The lecture was called  "Misquoting Jesus: Scribes Who Altered Scripture and Readers Who May Never Know."   The original flyer announcing the event is here in PDF format. One of [...]

2018-01-14T22:51:17-05:00November 3rd, 2013|New Testament Manuscripts, Public Forum, Video Media|

Colbert on his Hero O’Reilly

OK, this really is my last post on O’Reilly’s Killing Jesus.   It’s not much of one!   But today is the day I normally take “off” from the blog.  Monday’s are my day from hell:  a three-hour undergraduate seminar (“Jesus in Scholarship and Film”) in the morning (today: students compared all the accounts of Jesus’ Passion in the four Gospels, seeing if there were any differences they thought were irreconcilable; we discussed it all; and then we watched four movie clips – Passion scenes from the 1925 silent Ben Hur; the 1959 Ben Hur; the Greatest Story Ever Told; and the 1977 Zephirelli Jesus of Nazareth – in order to see how directors chose what to include, what to exclude, what to do when different Gospels relate different stories, that sometimes really can’t be easily reconciled, etc.   Great stuff) and then a three hour seminar (“Early Christian Apocrypha”) in the afternoon (today: The Coptic Gospel of Thomas - -when was it written? Where? In what language?  Is it dependent on the NT Gospels?  Is it Gnostic?  [...]

What Kind of a Text is the King James Bible?

Introduction: On January 24, 2013, the traveling exhibition Manifold Greatness: The Creation and Afterlife of the King James Bible opened at the William H. Hannon Library at Loyola Marymount University. The keynote talk for the opening: "What Kind of a Text is the King James Bible? Manuscripts, Translation, and the Legacy of the KJV" was presented by Dr. Bart Ehrman, James A. Grey Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at UNC Chapel Hill and New York Times bestselling author. In this lecture by Dr. Bart Ehrman, a leading authority on the New Testament and New York Times bestselling author, you will hear why the KJV has received such praise and adoration over the centuries, and then turn to consider aspects of the translation that also need to be considered when assessing its greatness and value:  the archaic language that at times can confuse modern readers; the inferior ancient manuscripts on which the translation was based; and the theological biases that occasionally led the translators to make the biblical text say something other than it originally meant. [...]

2017-12-31T23:42:48-05:00February 26th, 2013|New Testament Manuscripts, Public Forum, Video Media|
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