Bart D. Ehrman's Blog, page 135

End of the Year Assessment: The Blog, 2021

Here we are at the end of the year.  What a year.  We thought we would see the end of the pandemic and the good times would roll.  Well, not exactly.  They sure seemed about to roll but, nope, just when we thought the thing was ending … hello Omicron!   I hope you have come [...]

What I’m Reading These Days. You?

Before Christmas this year I read Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.  It’s a great story.   (Novella?  It’s about a hundred pages in my edition.)  I used to read it every year.  In my first marriage, for a number of years, my wife and I read it out loud to each other on Christmas Eve. Just about [...]

On Misreading The Gospels: Platinum Guest Post by Joel Scheller

I am pleased to present this interesting guest post to Platinum members to fellow Platinum Joel Scheller.  Joel has taken on one of the most important issues that we can ask of the New Testament:  Are the Gospels meant to be read historically?  Or, as John Shelby Spong argued, are they meant to be symbolic [...]

The Bible’s Best Known Short Story: Jonah

Now we come to the most famous short story of the entire Bible: Jonah!  Again, since it is “short” it does not take long to read – just four brief chapters – and it’s surprising so few people have actually read it.  And a pity.  It’s a terrific little book that is adventurous and thought-provoking.  [...]

Gold Q&A (Slight Delay)

With apologies: I won't be able to have your Gold Q&A out by December 29, but I am highly sanguine that it will be before the end of the year!  Sorry!  I'm in London and spending a good deal of time and effort in playing dodgeball with Omicron.  So far so good; but it has [...]

Evangelical Support for Misquoting Jesus: Kurt Jaros, Guest Post #3

Here now is the third of Evangelical theologian and apologist Kurt Jarod's videos supporting my views of the manuscript tradition of the New Testament against critiques leveled by fellow evangelicals.  Watch, see, and enjoy! Misquoting Ehrman – Part Three: Methods “After describing how some Christian scholars have built a strawman out of Bart Ehrman’s view, [...]

Which King of the Jews Do You Prefer? Christmas Message, 2021

Over the years I’ve said a lot about the New Testament, usually showing its manifold and various problems.  But at most that’s half the story, and probably a lot less.  There is something far more important:  once you realize there are problems with a literal or historical reading, there is still the STORY.  And the [...]

Two Apocryphal Short Stories

We've been doing short stories in this thread, and now I will introduce two more.  These are from the "Apocrypha."  This is the term that Protestants use for a group of Jewish books not in the Hebrew Bible that are, however, accepted by both Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians as having a secondary canonical [...]

A Better Kind of Fundamentalist!

Here now is my second post on that intriguing little article by Louis Markos in the journal First Things, which he entitled “Errant Ehrman.”   If you’ll recall from my last post, Markos starts the article by indicating that he felt “great pity” for me because I was the wrong kind of fundamentalist back when I [...]

Recording of Platinum Webinar: Six Versions of the Advent of Jesus

Dear Platinum members, A number of you were able to come to our quarterly Platinum webinar a few days ago; and a number weren't!   Whether there or not, you can see it here.   I thought it was an unusually interesting topic, that I've never lectured on before: six different understandings from early Christianity of how [...]