Bart D. Ehrman's Blog, page 130

Did I Have an Errant View of Inerrancy? (!) Guest Video Post by Kurt Jaros (#5)

This fifth installment of a six-part video thread by Kurt Jaros, an evangelical Christian apologist, considers my views of Scripture back in my hard-core conservative evangelical days and their (possible?) impact on my later decision to leave the faith altogether.  My ears are tingling! ****************************** In this video, I look at the young Bart Ehrman’s [...]

February Gold Q&A: Ask your Questions!

Dear Gold Members, It is time for our monthly Gold Q&A.  Have a question?  Ask it!  Anything related to the blog! To enter your question on to the list: send it to Diane at ehrmanblog@gmail.com DEADLINE for your question. Midnight EST this Friday, Feb. 25.  I will make the recording that weekend, and it will [...]

Heaven and Hell at the Scholarly Level (for comparison)

In this short thread I'm trying to explain the difference between a trade book for a general audience and an academic book for scholars, through example.  In my  previous post I gave the beginning couple of pages of my trade book with Simon and Schuster, Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife. The academic [...]

Heaven and Hell at the Popular Level

I often get asked about the difference between my trade books for general audiences and my academic monographs for scholars.  Three times in my career I have written on the same topic for a popular and a scholarly audience.   The first was one on the manuscripts of the NT.  The popular book was Misquoting Jesus:  [...]

The Messages of Jesus and Paul: Basically the Same or Fundamentally Different?

I have been talking about the relationship of Jesus’ proclamation of the coming Kingdom of God to Paul’s preaching about the importance of the death and resurrection of Jesus. In the previous post I argued that the fundamental concerns, interests, perspectives, and theologies of these two were different. In this post I’d like to give, [...]

Jesus and Paul: Are They on the Same Page?

I spent several posts explicating Paul’s understanding of his gospel, that by Christ’s death and resurrection a person is put into a restored relationship with God. He had several ways of explaining how it worked (the “judicial” model; the “participationist” model; and the other models I described). But in all of these ways, it was [...]

Would Anyone *Invent* the Story of the Women at the Tomb?

I received a question in the comments recently that I've gotten a lot before.  Wouldn't the Gospel story about women being the first to realize Jesus had been raised be contrary to what Christians would have *wanted* to say, possibly even embarrassing?  If so, isn't it likely that no one made it up but that [...]

(Re)Thinking Everything. Guest Post by Glenn Siepert

As you probably know,  a number of volunteers work for the blog, graciously giving their time and talents to promote the work we're doing.  As one of the perks, volunteers who have published a book of relevance to what we do here on the blog can write a post on it for us.  I did [...]

My Response to A Book That Responded To My Book: How Jesus Became God

I was browsing through some blog posts from many years ago and came upon this one, which I had completely forgotten about.   It gets a bit feisty at the end,  and that's because it was written back when I was ... feistier.   Even so, it makes an overarching point I still agree with.  It's  about  [...]

The Heart of Jesus’ Message

To this point in the thread I have been talking about Paul’s “religion” – specifically, what he thought was important in a person’s relationship with God. He expressed his views in a variety of ways – I have talked about his judicial and his participationist understandings of salvation, and have made brief comments on yet [...]