Bart D. Ehrman's Blog, page 177
August 30, 2020
Does Basic Information about the NT *Matter*? My Pop Quiz
Last week I posted the pop quiz that I gave my first-year seminar, “Jesus in Scholarship and Film,” on the opening day of the term. There are several reasons I give a quiz, even before the students have read, heard lectures, or discussed anything about the New Testament. For one thing, it’s a fun activity and we can have some laughs – it’s not graded and we go over the answers after they take it. For another thing, it’s important for me to know how much they know about the New Testament and e...
August 28, 2020
Paul’s Ascent to Paradise. Guest Post by James Tabor
A couple of weeks ago I learned that James Tabor had republished his book Paul’s Ascent to Heaven, his first scholarly monograph, which, alas, had gone out of print. But it’s back in! I wrote him to ask if he’d be willing to write a couple of guest posts about it, and here is the first. This one explains how and where the book originated (published 1986); his next post will discuss how his mind has changed on some issues in the intervening years.
Many of you know James from his other writings...
August 27, 2020
What Is the Unforgivable Sin? Readers’ Mailbag.
Important question this week!
QUESTION:
I wondered if you have written a blog which talks specifically about the ‘unpardonable sin’.
RESPONSE:
Well, it’s been a while. But I get asked this question a good bit, and almost always it is a fearful request – by someone who is afraid they’ve committed it. So it’s worth addressing the issue again. I think the NT is pretty clear on the matter, even though few people actually look carefully at what it says about it.
In a famous passage in Matthew, Je...
August 26, 2020
My Faux Pop Quiz this Semester
Here’s a question from one of my recent posts on teaching this term, and what I did on the first day of class.
QUESTIONS
Now that Aug 11 is safely past, is there any chance that we here on the blog might be able to see the “Faux Pop Quiz”?
RESPONSES
The question is about the pop quiz I gave on my first day of class in my First Year Seminar (i.e, the small seminar for first year students – their first semester in college!) on “Jesus in Scholarship and Film.” Different instructors d...
August 24, 2020
My Early Christian Apocrypha Seminar
I am teaching a PhD seminar this semester on the early Christian apocrypha; it’s a little hard to define what those are, though hundreds of people have tried!. The way I define them are as non-canonical books that are similar in genre and contents to those that did make it into the canon. Or something like that. They comprise Gospels, Acts, Epistles, and Apocalypses, they can be “orthodox” or “non-orthodox” (= ” heretical”); most of them claim to be written by apostles (but not all); the ones...
August 23, 2020
At Last. Jesus and the Son of Man.
Two weeks ago I started addressing a question I got asked on the blog. At first I was just going to reply to the question as a comment; as my response started getting a bit long I decided I better devote an entire post to it. When I started working on a post on in, I decided it needed to be a thread. As I pointed out, that was two weeks ago. And I still haven’t answered the question.
I’ll answer it here rather briefly, based on the information I’ve given. The answer should make sense on its...
August 21, 2020
Smith-Pettit Lecture – The History of Heaven and Hell
Here is a webinar that I did on July 29th, 2020, as the Smith-Pettit lecture for the Sunstone Digital Symposium sponsored by Sunstone Education Foundation. It was on the “History of Heaven and Hell.” It was an unusual event for me: Sunstone is an independent organization located in Salt Lake City, Utah. Sunstone does not have any official ties to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints but it does serve mainly them, bringing together traditional and non-traditional Latter-day Saints, ...
August 20, 2020
The Flukes of Life and My Teaching Career
I’ve been concerned for the past months (among many other things, of course) about PhD’s trying to get teaching positions in colleges and universities. Even when there is not an economy-busting pandemic, it’s hard. Very hard. Many years ago when I was on the market, I had an awful time trying to find a job .
Oddly enough, I see now, I posted on this very topic, on this very date during the first year of the blog (2012). Here’s what I said then.
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August 19, 2020
“The Case for Christ”? The New Testament Review Podcast
Here now is the second guest post by Duke PhD students Ian Mills and Laura Robinson, dealing with their podcast New Testament Review. In this one they describe one of their more unusual podcasts. As you’ll see, they deal with extremely interesting material for to anyone interested real scholarship on early Christianity– as opposed to the (often very popular) books by people who don’t know or understand scholarship but try to denigrate it in order to “prove” their own sectarian views.
Blog...
August 17, 2020
How Jesus’ Apocalyptic Teachings Were Changed (even in the NT)
I have been arguing that Jesus talked about a figure he called the Son of Man, a cosmic judge of the earth who was soon to arrive from heaven to judge all people, to destroy the opponents of God (both human and non-human) and to reward his (human) followers with a utopian kingdom here on earth. This was not a weird, unusual, or psychotic message: in basic terms it was a rather common view among Jews in Jesus day, a view that scholars have called “apocalyptic.”
The word comes from the Greek term...
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