Bart D. Ehrman's Blog, page 143

My Relationship with Bruce Metzger: More on the Personal Side

After all the tangents and side-tracks, I can return now to my reminiscences of my relationship with Bruce Metzger. Perhaps I should say a few things about his personality, as I perceived and experienced it. I think everyone who knew him would say that he was a true Christian gentleman.  He was respectful of all [...]

What Do Translators Translate? It’s Not So Obvious…

Translators of the Bible have a terrifically complicated and difficult (and usually thankless) task.  I always knew that, of course, with my head – ever since taking Greek back in college.  But I did not relate to the problems emotionally until I started publishing translations of my own.  It’s HARD.  My first translation project was [...]

What Do Translators Translate? It’s Not So Obvious….

Translators of the Bible have a terrifically complicated and difficult (and usually thankless) task.  I always knew that, of course, with my head – ever since taking Greek back in college.  But I did not relate to the problems emotionally until I started publishing translations of my own.  It’s HARD.  My first translation project was [...]

What Do YOU Think? The Experience of Death.

A month ago I decided to add a new feature to the blog, a periodic post that asks you to share your personal view about something, your honest opinion based on serious expertise or complete non-expertise. These posts are (and will be) called “What Do You Think?”  I will NOT be responding to your replies/comments.  [...]

A More Serious (Specific) Problem with the NRSV Translation

In my last post I mentioned John 3:22 as a verse that is mistranslated in the NRSV, leading to problems; but the problems of interpretation are not that enormous there – the translators simply removed an internal inconsistency by the way they mistranslated the verse. This second problem, the subject of this post, is more [...]

What Do I Think of the New Revised Standard Version?

I recently discussed how I became a secretary for the New Revised Standard Version translation committee as a grad student.  Several people have asked me what I think of the translation, and if I have any problems with it.  My answer is pretty straightf0rward and comes in two parts:  I think it is the best [...]

Two Gold Q&A’s for October!

Dear Gold Members, First, many apologies.  September got away from me; I was out of town for a third of it (lecturing for a UNC Alumni tour in northern Italy, suffering for the cause), and the rest of it just ate me alive.  So I missed the Gold Q&A. But never fear: I am going [...]

Behind the Scenes of the New Revised Standard Version

Here I will give two rather humorous stories (at least to me) connected with my work as the administrative assistant for the revision of the Revised Standard Version. In that capacity I was, of course, present for the various deliberations of the committee. Among the many issues they discussed was what to call the new [...]

More of My Work for the NRSV Bible Translation Committee

A CONTINUATION OF MY POSTS OF MY RELATIONSHIP WITH BRUCE METZGER I served as one of the secretaries for the NRSV, as explained in my as explained in my post of Sept. 16th, for a couple of years. It was not onerous work and was quite a privilege to be able to associate with some [...]

Why these Caricatures of the Old Testament God? Guest post by Amy-Jill Levine

We earlier had a guest post by Marc Zvi Brettler, an internationally renowned scholar of ancient Judaism, as related to his book The Bible With and Without Jesus (HarperOne, 2020), co-authored with New Testament scholar (and my long-time friend) Amy-Jill Levine.   Many of you will know of Amy-Jill: she is an extremely popular lecturer, full [...]