Bart D. Ehrman's Blog, page 180

Two More Answers from My Pop Quiz

I continue here with some comments about my pop quiz (see: https://ehrmanblog.org/my-faux-pop-quiz-this-semester/ and https://ehrmanblog.org/does-basic-information-about-the-nt-matter-my-pop-quiz/ ), and some of the reasons I ask the questions – that is, what I try to teach from the answers (so that the quiz is not designed to see how much the students know already).   Here are two more of the questions:

 

In what century were they (the books of the NT) written?

Answer:  First century CE.  I u...

More Member Publications!

A while back I asked blog members to forward to me information about publications they have … published.  Twice I’ve given a half dozen, and here are some more: a couple of articles and a couple of books.  They all look fascinating to me, and two of them are by research scholars / professors of the New Testament that I know.  Maybe one of the others is as well, that I don’t know!  In any case, read through their self-descriptions, and if you’re so moved, check out the publications themselves!

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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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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, ...

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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