Bart D. Ehrman's Blog, page 170

Human Suffering and the Christian Faith

I've started a short thread on the issue of how the problem of suffering affected my Christian faith.  To explain the matter further, here I quote from a section of my book God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer our Most Important Question:  Why We Suffer.   The book is mainly about the variety of answers [...]

My Struggle With Why There Is Suffering

As many blog members know, I left the Christian faith because of the problem I had with understanding why there could be so much suffering in the world if there was an all-powerful and truly-loving God in control of it.  I have sometimes received questions about that, and will deal with one of them soon [...]

Paul Dictated His Letters: How Does *That* Complicate Finding an Original?

I have been talking about the problems in knowing what the “original” text of Philippians is.  Even with the following brief review, the comments I will be making in this post will, frankly, probably not make much sense if you do not refresh your memory from my previous two posts.  Here I will be picking [...]

Why Finding an “Original” Text is So Unexpectedly Complicated

I have been asked to comment on whether we can get back to the “original” text of Paul’s letter to the Philippians, and I have begun to discuss the problems not just of getting *back* to the original, but also of knowing even what the original *was*.   In my previous post I pointed out the [...]

What Does It Even Mean to Have an “Original” of An Ancient Writing?

I have begun to answer a series of questions asked by a reader about the textual history of Paul’s letter to the Philippians.  In my previous post I explained why some critical scholars maintain that the letter was originally two separate letters that have been spliced together.  That obviously makes the next question the reader [...]

Could Paul’s Letter to the Philippians be TWO Letters?

In my previous post I answered, in short order, a series of questions that a reader had about the “original” text of Paul’s letter to the Philippians.  I will now take several posts in order to address some of the questions at greater length.  Here was the first one:   QUESTION:  Would you agree that [...]

A Fund-Raising Webinar: What Can We Really Know about the Birth of Jesus??

I have decided to hold a small and intimate webinar in order to raise money for the Bart Ehrman Blog.  Every penny that the webinar brings in will go directly to two of the blog’s charities, The Food Bank of Central/Eastern North Carolina and Doctors without Borders, split equally between them.  It will be held [...]

Do We Have Paul’s Original Letter to the Philippians?

A few days ago I answered a question about whether someone in the very earliest church who was reading one of the Christian writings to his congregation in the church -- say, one of the Gospels or one of Paul's letters -- might have *changed* it in places orally so that the people who were [...]

Thanksgiving 2020

As long-term members of the blog will know, I have always said that Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.   I have to admit, as I get older (and older), many of the holidays that were once a significant part of my life – even as an adult – have more or less faded away for me: [...]

Christian Manuscripts Used for Magic?

Very few biblical scholars are interested in studying the actual manuscripts of the New Testament.  It's an unusually rigorous and technical field, and most are interested instead in how to interpret the New Testament.   That's true of most fields.  The vast majority of Shakespeare scholars are interested in figuring out what the plays *mean*, not [...]