Bart D. Ehrman's Blog, page 181

Publications By Blog Members! 7.9.20

Last month I invited Blog Members who had published something in some way connected to the blog to tell all of the rest of us about it.  Many have done so!  If you, too, would like to make your written work known, please read very carefully the instructions in the original post:

https://ehrmanblog.org/have-you-written-something-you-would-like-to-advertise-on-the-blog/

 

Today I publish the second batch.  They are of various kinds and all sound interesting.  I have a stockpile of others submitted...

Why Is This Happening To Us?

It is very difficult to be a sentient human being just now and not wonder occasionally or, well, obsessively: “Why is this happening to us?”  I’m not speaking of the scientific questions of how Covid began and spread, how it is like and unlike other viruses, how it works, how it spreads, how… well, there are a million scientific questions and we read about them every day.  I don’t mean those, but the more existential question.  How do we make sense of it all?

It is is less of a problem for natur...

Reason and Theology – Heaven, Hell and the Afterlife

Here is the recording of an interesting on-line discussion I had on May 17, 2020 for a podcast called “Reason and Theology.”  It was a rather unusual experience for me.  The three moderators were all extremely well-informed lay people who are deeply interested in and knowledgeable about Roman Catholic tradition and theology.  We talked about my book “Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife,” and we got into all sorts of things that I never would have expected.

The podcast generally seeks to ...

An Intriguing New Documentary: The Search – Manufacturing Belief

One of the most interesting interviews I’ve done in recent years was for a feature-length documentary that has now appeared and available for viewing (e.g., Amazon Prime) called “The Search – Manufacturing Belief.”  It was the brainchild of Patrick Payne, who also produced and directed it. This is how it is described on the Documentary Channel:

Juxtaposing reason with mythology, philosophy with religion, and science with mysticism, filmmaker Patrick Payne interviews thought leaders from across t...

Are You Willing to Donate a Free Membership (or more) To Someone Who Needs It?

Over the past three months we have offered free temporary memberships to people who would like to belong to the blog but cannot afford a membership during this time of crisis.  We have had nearly three thousand people take us up on that offer, and many have expressed real, heartfelt gratitude.

I would like to implement a similar program now but, with a different approach.  This may involve you.  From the beginning, none of the money from blog membership fees or direct donations has gone into any...

Do Matthew and Paul Agree on the Matter Most Important to them Both?

I was going through posts from many years ago and came across this one, on an issue I’ve always thought was unusually interesting: if the writer of the Gospel of Matthew (whoever that was) and the apostle Paul had been locked in a room and not allowed to emerge until they had hammered out a consensus statement on how one attains eternal life, would they still be in there, possibly with their skeletons locked in a mutual death grip?  I didn’t put it that way when I posted this so long ago, but I ...

How Accurate are our Copies of the Hebrew Bible?

After my recent posts on the Dead Sea Scrolls a number of readers have asked me about the surviving copies of the Hebrew Bible.  Is it true that Jewish scribes didn’t make copying errors and intentional alterations in the copies of the Hebrew Bible they produced, unlike the Christian scribes who made thousands?  How many manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible do we have?  How have the Dead Sea Scrolls affected our understanding of Jewish copying practices?

All terrific questions – both interesting and ...

Was Jesus Connected with the Dead Sea Scrolls Community?

In my previous post I talked about the significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls for understanding Jesus and the milieu out of which earliest Christianity grew.  My basic point is that if Jesus was a Jew, then to understand him, you have to understand Jews in his world.  And the Dead Sea Scrolls provide us valuable information to that end.

I am not saying that the Dead Sea Scrolls are representative of what all or even most Jews thought at the time.  They clearly are not.  If the “Essene hypothesis” ...

Randy Alcorn’s Response to Some Blog Criticisms (part 2)

A few days ago I posted the first part of Randy Alcorn’s explanation of his views, in response to a number of criticisms blog members leveled at his review of my book Heaven and Hell.  In particular, a number of readers thought that he was unduly harsh and even “slandered” me.  Here he provides a response.  Feel free to make further comments, though Randy probably will not be responding directly.

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The Importance of the Dead Sea Scrolls for Understanding Jesus: Readers’ Mailbag

A few posts ago I discussed, very briefly, the Dead Sea Scrolls.  I received a number of questions about the post, one in particular with some frequency: how did the discovery of the Scrolls contribute to our understanding of Jesus and early Christianity?  For me as a NT scholar, it is obviously an unusually important question.

Let me stress that the Scrolls are *mainly* important for understanding early Judaism, and only secondarily for understanding early Christianity.  But with that said, the...