Bart D. Ehrman's Blog, page 131

Preface to My Book on Revelation: Expecting Armageddon

I have sent my book manuscript off to my editor.  She will work it over, ask for edits, and we'll go from there.  The preface to the book, as it now stands, explains what the book is about and what I try to argue for in it.  I thought I'd pass it by you to [...]

Still Other Models of Salvation in Paul

I have been discussing various ways that Paul understands the importance of the death and resurrection of Jesus for salvation, and have focused on the judicial and participationist models – mainly because these are the two that Paul most frequently appeals to (without calling them the judicial and participationist models!).   I need to clarify a [...]

Paul’s Models of Salvation: Contradictory or Complementary?

I’ve been discussing how Paul understands the significance of Jesus’ death and resurrection for salvation, and have done so by laying out as concisely as I could his two principal “models” of how salvation worked, the judicial and the participationist model. In this post I’ll make some brief concluding comments about the two models, in [...]

The “Common Era”: Invented to Stop Speculations About the End of the World. Platinum Guest Post by Daniel Kohanski

I'm pleased to publish this Platinum guest post by Dan Kohanski.  I think I can *guarantee* that most of you will not have heard this information before!  And it's really interesting, the kind of thing you might wonder about but not know who to ask. Dan will be happy to respond to your comments and [...]

Paul’s “Participationist” Model of Salvation.

I started explaining that Paul has different ways that he conceptualizes the act of salvation – how the death and resurrection of Christ restores a person to a right relationship with God. The judicial model that I laid out can be found in several of Paul’s letters, especially Romans and Galatians. But he has other [...]

Do We Have Any Reliable Sources for Pontius Pilate?

I recently was asked in a comment what kind of independent information do we have, outside the Gospels, for Pontius Pilate?  Answer: not much.  I told the commenter that I thought I had once written about the matter, and lo and behold, I was right.  It was in my book Did Jesus Exist? The book [...]

Are the Teachings of Jesus Realistic? Platinum guest post by Douglas Wadeson

Now *here's* a challenging post, by Platinum member Doug Wadeson.  Read it and see!  Doug will be happy to reply to responses. Many thanks Doug.  Others of you who want to do a post -- go for it. ********************** Jesus is generally thought of as a great moral teacher, but I have heard that questioned [...]

How Did Paul Understand Salvation? The “Judicial” Model

I am currently in the middle of a thread discussing the significance of Paul to the history of early Christianity.  So far I have been trying to argue that Paul is of utmost importance to the New Testament itself, but that it is very difficult to know how much of what we think of as [...]

What Was Paul’s Innovation?

I was recently recording the monthly Q&A that I do with Gold members of the blog (if you're not a Gold member, this is one of the perks of moving to that level: every month Gold members ask me questions -- in writing -- and I record a 50-55 minute audio Q&A answering them; since [...]

What Do You Think? What’s It Mean to Study Religion in a Secular University?

One of my classes this semester is a First Year Seminar, designed, obviously for students in their first year of college (either semester) and meant to be a bit more hands-on and with an unusual creative component.  I’ve mentioned the course on the blog in previous years; it is called “Jesus in Scholarship and Film.”   [...]