I’m pleased to announce that I will be doing a new two-lecture course on a rather timely topic, When Does Life Begin: The Status of the Unborn in the Biblical Tradition. The course is not connected with the Blog per se, except insofar as I’m doing it and many of you might be interested. For more information and registration, go to http://www.bartehrman.com/life
Even if you can’t come to the live lectures, you will be able to get a recording of the course to watch at your leisure.
Here’s a description of the course:
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The issue of abortion is one of the most divisive controversies in our country. In many ways it comes down to a very basic question: When Does Life Begin? At conception? Later in gestation? When the fetus is viable? At birth?
For many people the question is intimately connected with the Bible. Does the Bible declare, intimate, or assume that the fetus is human? Some emphatically say yes. Others say no. Other are not so sure.
In these lecture, we address the question head on. What does the Bible say about the status of the unborn?
The course will look at both sides of the question, considering passages that can be used to claim the embryo and/or fetus is a human – so that an intentional termination of pregnancy would be murder — and passages that can be used to maintain it is not.
The course will NOT take a stand on the modern debates or the underlying question of when life begins. The course will, however, attempt to show what the Bible actually says about the matter. For some people the biblical view is the deciding factor, for others not. But whatever one’s position on biblical authority, it is important to know what the biblical view is.
The course will consist of two 50-minute lectures followed by an extended life Q&A. People of every persuasion are welcome and encouraged to attend.
Questions to be Addressed:
- Was abortion known to the ancient world?
- Do the biblical authors ever discuss it?
- Does Jesus address it, or say anything of relevance to it?
- Do any passages in the Old or New Testament that show that biblical authors assumed or implied that life begins at conception or at some point of gestation before birth?
- Are there passages that indicate they did not think so?
- Is there a single view in the Bible, or a variety of perspectives?
- How might knowing the biblical view affect the modern debate?
Obviously these are hotly debated issues. I hope you can join me for the event.
Hi Bart,
Such a blessing being here. I have listened to How Jesus Became God and the Gospel of Judas on audio many times.
I have many questions.
I know this is a very controversial, does Judas get a bad rap in history? Somebody has to bring the guards to the garden to seize Jesus. And doesn’t he know, as the Father, Son and Holy Spirit the alpha to the epsilon and Judas’s betrayal, is all part of his plan? The Gospel of Judas seems to let Judas off the hook. Had the Jews wanted to Jesus dead, couldn’t they have stoned him right there . I think you mentioned that at the last supper, Jesus saying, “Do what must be done” could be a command from a leader to a follower. Am I way off base? Also, Jesus preached love and forgiveness. On a Christian radio show when I asked about this, they said he is 100% absolutely in hell for betraying our Lord.
You may be interested in my book The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot, where I deal with all these questions. And no, I don’t think the historical Jesus said that to Judas or even expected Judas to betray him, although of course he does in the Gospels. The big task for historians is to separate what later stories *say* about Jesus from what we can know historically about him. It’s a very complicated task that the hosts on your Christian radio show wouldn’t probably know much about since they almost certainly think that if something is in the Gopsels it is necessarily historical.
Hello, Bart,
Could you please explain to me Genesis 38:9-10?
[9] But since Onan knew that the offspring would not be his, he spilled his semen on the ground whenever he went in to his brother’s wife, so that he would not give offspring to his brother. [10] What he did was displeasing in the sight of the Lord, and he put him to death also.
What did Onan actually do and why did God put him to death?
Onan did not want his now dead older brother’s sister to conceive by him (the child would techinically be considered his brothers) and so engaged in coitus interruptus so as not to ejaculate into her. God was angry because the law was he was supposed to have a child for his brother’s line to continue, and so he (God) killed him.
Jesus chose Judas Iscariot. & Jesus himself says one will betray me as he was chosen. “24The Son of Man will go just as it is written about him. But woe to that man who betrays the Son of Man! It would be better for him if he had not been born.”
this sort of goes against predestination & godly perfection.
I do not embrace the ignorance of social media & most on there. [is this social media? I feel this is a discussion on topic[s]]
https://www.quora.com/How-did-Jesus-choose-his-disciples
Shelby Anguiano
He was told by his Father who to choose. John 6:44; 17:6, 9
I hope that helps.
Peace!
Demi Oyewusi
I take it you mean “the 12 disciples”,
“And one of those day Jesus went out to a mountain side to pray, and spent the night praying to God. When morning came He called His disciples to Him and chose 12 of them, whom he also designated apostles:”
Luke 6:12 -13 niv
Jesus choice of his 12 disciples were devinely guided. It’s easy to see through that passage that the content of his prayer the night before was majorly about which of the disciples to pick.
1. For me, the interesting thing about people wanting to use the Bible for this matter is that the Bible was written 2000+ before many science related issues were even known. Even if the Bible did discuss the matter of when life began and abortion, whatever it says could not possibly be accurate.
2. Over my lifetime, the idea of saving a woman’s life due to a complicated pregnancy has changed greatly. It used to be that a pregnancy was terminated to save a woman’s life when complications arose. It was not called an abortion. It was a necessary procedure to save a woman’s life where if the pregnancy was not terminated, then there was a good chance of losing both the mother and baby.
Now it seems that anti-abortionists only care about an unborn baby with no concern for the health and safety of the woman.
1. Well, it *could* be accurate, but it would be more by accident than knowledge.
2. I’m not sure I’d put it that way. In any event, there are, as you know, various views among people who think abortion is in principle not to be allowed.
“In any event, there are, as you know, various views among people who think abortion is in principle not to be allowed.”
Right. That was the point I was trying to make. Those people, it seems, would at times, allow both the woman and unborn baby die rather than terminate a pregnancy. Also, it seems, that they would allow the woman to go through a traumatic miscarriage rather than terminate a pregnancy.
And I would guess that no female, regard of age, would want to go full term with a baby’s birth that was a result of rape.
It seems that politics have become a major part of how many people set their beliefs on issues such as abortion.
When the dog dies and the last child leaves home.
My deep respect for the figure of Jesus and his philosophy has never relied too heavily or literally on Sola Scriptura. As you have pointed out on many occasions, a number of parts of “the Biblical tradition” as received appear contradictory or interpretative rather than factual, magnified or suppressed by vested church politicians, become lost both in written form and “translation” etc. But a broad sense of Jesus’ values still come through strongly, namely, in the modern lingo, social justice, mutual care and universal inclusion. Or as Matthew “reported” it, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”- Jesus’ summary of the ethical Law.
I think it is now universally agreed that ‘life’ does not begin at conception because, clearly, both sperm and egg are alive prior to conception. The question is whether a zygote, embryo or foetus is human in the same sense that born humans are. With regard to Christian practice, if Christians believe 1) unborn humans are as important as any other and 2) Baptism is necessary for salvation; why was there no practice of in-utero baptism (and still is not).
I don’t think anything is universally agreed. There are probably several billion people in the world who belief that life begins at conception, even if it’s not a scientific “fact”.
I must suggest that your epistemology- how we “know” what we know- is simply not correct here.
There is an overwhelming scientific consensus that a human life or being exists from the process of fertilisation. 96%, or 5337 out 5577 biologists from academic institutions around the world recently reconfirmed this fact, as professional respondents to a survey.
(The Scientific Consensus on When a Human’s Life Begins Steven Jacobs, University of Chicago 2021 Fall; 36(2): 221-233)
No, the current contention about abortion is based on a clash of value assertions, embraced in opinions. The scientific method has already told us what it knows about the facts.
What we mean by “human” is not a scientific question. “Life” can be. My fingernails are alive. The question is not when something living begins but what it means to be a *human* living. Is an embryo a “human” life? If most scientists think so (as you are indicating), that means that scientists have developed a definition of what it means to be human. If so, what is that? (Genuine question)
I suspect you did not even read what I wrote. Of course a “human life” can and is determined factually, as these thousands of biologists I referred in the study confirmed.
On the other hand, value or worth is debated and evaluated in the context of other values, such as justice, universal inclusion, no discrimination, zero tolerance for unjustifiable violence etc. but with no “Quod Est Demonstandum” determination.
I think it’s the other way around. I know that scientists say life begins at conception (or before, since, well, the elements that lead to conception are themselves alive), but that’s not to say that an embryo is a *human being*. It’s to say that it is alive. As I pointed out, so are my fingernails. I’m NOT denying that an embryo is a human when I put it this way. I’m saying that “life” is not necessarily “human life.”
“In many ways it comes down to a very basic question: When Does Life Begin?”
Actually, I think that for both the religious and the non-religious, the question comes down to “when does *personhood* begin?” We can conceive of multiple examples of humans discarding human organic matter without controversy: clipping one’s fingernails, cutting one’s hair, an appendectomy, an amputation, etc. All of those examples entail cleaving off and discarding human tissue, but we don’t assign that tissue personhood. If a Mars probe found a fertilized human egg, all would agree that we’d found a sign of life on Mars. If we sequenced the DNA, we’d also all agree that it was human. Human life. But is it a person with rights, like the right to life?
When does a fertilized human egg graduate from being non-person human tissue to attain personhood with the attendant right to life? Immediately upon fertilization? At six weeks? At 15 weeks? At viability? Only upon birth? Or does the prohibition against spilling one’s seed on the ground found in the story of Onan and Tamar (Genesis 38:9-10) indicate to the faithful that every human *seed* (even prior to fertilization) has a right to life?
I’ll strongly second this observation; the common “when does life begin?” framing is, I think, badly misconceived.
There is, after all, a debate parallel to the one surrounding abortion (though less urgent given the relative infrequency of the circumstances) about whether it is morally appropriate to remove life support from someone who is “brain dead”—whose higher brain functions, memory, and personality have all been destroyed beyond any hope of recovery, though enough brainstem function may remain to keep their heart and lungs going indefinitely. There is no doubt that such individuals are living organisms and members of the species homo sapiens, which would presumably settle the question if we all agreed that was what was morally important.
Thank you, all of you involved, for airing and addressing this important matter.
As far as I know, in Antiquity it was common in the Roman world to abandon or expose unwanted babies as newborns, which I assume often resulted in the baby dying, so would have been a form of infanticide. My questions, Dr. Ehrman: Did writers in or around the 1st century debate this practice? Was it controversial, or was it simply accepted as a normal thing to do? What do we know about that? And if this was a debated topic: Would the fact that the apostle Paul does not mention it in his letters – even though he addresses other problematic behaviours such sexual misconduct – indicate that he didn’t know about this form of infanticide? didn’t care about it? didn’t find it problematic?
It was accepted as fairly normal among the lower classes. The upper class elite who provide us with texts would not have been doing it. Paul would have known about it, but he didn’t mention probalby 99% of the things he knew about, just things that were problems of faith and practice in the Christian communities he founded.
Hi, Bart,
Again, I found multiple answers to the following question:
Why were some books (that the catholics have in their canon) regarded as Apocrypha by the protestants?
Could you please shed some light?
During the Reformatoin Martin Luther and other Reformers considered only the books of the Hebrew BIble to be inspired by God. In part that was because the apocryphal books (found in the Greek OT, and from there in the Latin) could be used to support doctrines of the Catholic church rejected by Protestants (such as purgatory).