Bart D. Ehrman's Blog, page 130

A Particularly Intriguing Podcast Interview: Jesus, the Bible, and Early Christianity

On December 20 I had a very interesting interview on the Podcast called Blogging Theology (Blogging Theology – Exploring Life, the Universe and Everything with a former Christian, now Muslim Paul Williams, who, as it turns out, is highly knowledgeable about the Bible, early Christianity, and the scholarship connected with them..  This is the kind [...]

Is the Book of Isaiah the Books of Three “Isaiahs”?

Divisions of the Book of Isaiah Before using the book of Isaiah to explain the kinds of things the Hebrew prophets generally proclaimed, I need to say something about the peculiarity of this long, 66-chapter writing in particular. A number of the books of the Bible appear to have been edited by later redactors -- [...]

How Can We Understand the Prophets of the Hebrew Bible? Isaiah as a Case Study

I have started to discuss the prophets of the Hebrew Bible, in large part to correct widespread misunderstandings of what they were doing and what their books were about, and in part to emphasize just how interesting and important they are.  These are Israelite teachers who believe that God was delivering a message through them [...]

Did My Shift in Thinking Destroy my Own Views? Guest Video Post #4 by Kurt Jaros

Kurt Jaros provides here the fourth in his series of videos about my views of whether we can know what the authors of the New Testament actually wrote.  It is an intriguing series: Dr. Jaros is a conservative evangelical Christian scholar who thinks that other public evangelical figures have misrepresented my views.  But this is [...]

Aren’t They Predicting the Future? More on the Prophets of the Old Testament

In my previous post I began to explain who the prophets of Scripture are, what they stand for, and what their message is.  In my experience, most people -- even most Bible readers -- don't actually know.  The general idea appears to be that prophets were all about predicting the coming of Jesus and the [...]

Gold Q&A for January!

Dear Gold Members, It's a new year!  And time for another Gold Q&A, our monthly audio for gold members only.  As always, you provide written questions, I try to answer them; the audio recording will be released to gold members only.  Have a question to ask?  Anything connected with the blog, directly or remotely?  Go [...]

They Ain’t Who You Think: Prophets in the Old Testament

One of the problems with blogs on the New Testament, and in fact in understanding the New Testament at all, is that it is very difficult to explain what’s happening in the New Testament without assuming a lot of knowledge about the Old Testament, but even devoted students of the New Testament don’t know much [...]

The Famous Short Stories about Daniel

Here I continue and conclude my discussion of short stories in the Hebrew Bible, with some of the favorite Sunday School stories of all time, found in the book of Daniel.  Again, I draw here on my college textbook, The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction to the Early Christian Writings. ****************************** The book of [...]

Jewish Indifference to Jesus and the Problems it Caused: Guest Post by Dan Kohanski

As you know, Platinum members of the blog are allowed to submit posts for other Platinum members, and other members vote on which of them should be provided to the blog as a whole (It's a nice perk. You should think about moving up to Platinum.  There are other perks too--one, of course, is that [...]

A New Course to Watch (Live!) Remotely: “In the Beginning”

I am pleased to announce that I will be doing a six-lecture online (recorded) course called: “In the Beginning:  History, Legend and Myth in the Pentateuch.  Part 1.  The Book of Genesis.”   This will not be in connection with the blog per se, but there is an important connection worth noting for blog members (see [...]