Bart D. Ehrman's Blog, page 175

The Tragedy Behind My Teaching Position

A few weeks ago I mentioned how the first teaching position I received was a matter of pure serendipity, and tragedy.  I had been in the job market for a couple of years, couldn’t get a nibble for a job, and out of the blue one opened up: a professor of New Testament at Rutgers, just a half hour from Princeton where I was still finishing my PhD, had to take an emergency leave of absence because her husband was dying of cancer.  I was nearby, I was looking for a position, and they gave me an emer...

Some Intriguing Selections from the Gospel of Peter

Now that I’ve said a few things about the Gospel of Peter, I thought it would be interesting to give you a bit of it.  It is a fascinating account, with lots of intriguing differences from the Passion narratives of the New Testament.  As I said in my previous post, its most striking passage involves Jesus’ resurrection.

It may come as a surprise to some of you to hear that the resurrection of Jesus is never narrated, or even described, in the New Testament.  But that’s true.  The NT Gospels expl...

A Very Odd Saying of Jesus

Now *here* is a recorded saying of Jesus I bet you haven’t heard before.  Unless you’ve been reading the blog for years.  It’s one of my favorites from outside the NT and it has an odd connection to a question I raised yesterday about the Gospel of Peter.  As I pointed out then, the “Gospel of Peter” that we have today, which was discovered in 1886, is, unfortunately, only a portion – the only surviving portion – of what was once a complete Gospel.  But was it a complete Gospel? Or was it a pass...

And Now: The Gospel of Peter!

Each week just now I’m talking about one of the apocryphal texts that I have assigned to my graduate seminar this semester on early Christian apocrypha.  This week we took on one of my all-time favorites, the Gospel of Peter.  I’ve mentioned it on the blog before, but it’s been a while.  I’ve been writing about it in the book I’m working on, and I’m particularly struck by how enigmatic and fascinating it is.

Unfortunately, we have only a fragment of the book, which begins smack dab in the middle...

Jesus’ Twin Brother? Really? Readers’ Mailbag

Here is a question I get with some fair regularity, and which I have addressed several times on the blog in the past.  Since I made a few posts on the Coptic Gospel of Thomas last week, I’ve received it again several times — including this succinct way of asking.

QUESTION:

I’m perplexed by how Jesus could have had a twin brother. Jesus was miraculously conceived of the holy spirit so how did a twin get into Mary’s womb at the same time?

RESPONSE:

Here is what I’ve said before about the matter wh...

Inclusive Language in Bible Translation?

One more issue connected with Bible translations: what does one do with shifts in usage in the English language toward inclusive language.  It’s a hot topic, and somehow I suspect one that a lot of people on the blog have strong views of.  I certainly have them.  I talked about it once on the blog, in connection with my work with the NRSV Translation Committee.

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One of the most difficult issues that the New Revised Standard Version translation committe...

Translating the Bible (and other ancient texts)

For a very long time I’ve been interested in the question of how to translate ancient texts, such as the Greek New Testament, into modern languages.  Early in my scholarly career my interest was piqued by the work I did as a graduate student working as a research grunt for the translation committee for the New Revised Standard Version.  My Doktorvater, Bruce Metzger, was the chair of the committee and he asked me, during my graduate studies, to be one of the scribes for the Old Testament subcomm...

The Secret Message of the Gospel of Thomas

This will be my last post for now on the Coptic Gospel of Thomas.  Here I try to unpack its overarching meaning.  It delivers a surprising method, quite different from that found in the Gospels of the New Testament.  Its author, of course, thought he was delivering the ultimate truth.  It’s interesting to think about what would have happened if people found him more convincing than the authors of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Again, this is taken from my textbook on the NT.

 

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The Gospel of Thomas: Some Basic Information

In my previous post I cited the first eighteen sayings of the Gospel of Thomas.  There are 114 altogether, but those first ones give the sense of the whole.  I’ll spend a couple of posts explaining a bit further what this Gospel is all about, first with a basic overview of its most important aspects.  This is taken from my textbook on the New Testament:

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The Gospel of Thomas

The Gospel of Thomas is without question the ...

Our Most Important Gospel from Outside the NT: The Gospel of Thomas

This week in my graduate seminar we will be discussing the Coptic Gospel of Thomas, not to be confused with the Infancy Gospel of Thomas that I mentioned in a post last week, with which this one has no relation, apart from the fact that both claim to be written by Thomas, a.k.a. Didymus Judas Thomas, i.e., Jesus’ brother Jude.

By far this Gospel of Thomas is the best known, most read, and most significant Gospel from outside the New Testament.  It was accidentally discovered in 1945 near Nag Ham...