Bart D. Ehrman's Blog, page 183

Doesn’t Jesus’ “Cleansing of the Temple” Show He Wanted a Military Uprising?

Did Jesus support of an armed uprising against Rome?  Yesterday I re-posted some comments I had made years ago on the blog about Aslan’s popular book Zealot, which advances that thesis.  I won’t be dealing with the entire book this time around: I’m just interested at this point in dealing with this vital question itself

Now I want to show how two data that are crucial for the “zealot hypothesis” actually make better sense with this apocalyptic understanding of Jesus.  The two data involve the te...

Did Jesus Favor Armed Rebellion Against Rome?

In response both to my thread on Judas and to my post on Barabbas from last week, a number of readers have asked or suggested that the stories about both figures may be explained on the hypothesis that Jesus was indeed a kind of insurrectionist who supported an armed rebellion against Rome.  That would explain possibly why Judas turned on him, and why he is treated equally to Barabbas, himself guilty of murder during an attempted insurrection.

I have dealt with the issue on the blog, but it has ...

Have You Written Something You Would Like To Advertise on the Blog?

Have you published a book, an article, an essay, or a poem (or something else) — either privately, or on the internet in some form, or with a journal/publishing company — that you would like more people to know about?  Something you would like to share with other members of the blog?   I have decided to allow blog members to make their work known to others who might be interested.

I will not be publishing the works here, or reprinting them.  I will be allowing blog members to write brief descrip...

Did the Gospel Writers Invent Barabbas? Readers’ Mailbag

One of the familiar stories from the end of the Gospels — it’s in all the Jesus movies! — comes at Jesus’ trial.  Pontius Pilate is trying to avoid executing Jesus.  As it turns out, he has an custom during the annual Passover feast (when the crowds of pilgrims in Jerusalem were enormous) of releasing one Jewish prisoner as a way to appease the crowds and keep himself in their good graces.

And so when the Jewish leaders insist on Jesus’ death, Pilate makes a last ditch effort, offering Jesus up ...

Interested in a Webinar? Topic: Do We Have the Original New Testament?

I will be holding a webinar on Sunday June 28 at 4:00 – 5:15 pm to raise money for the Bart Ehrman Blog.  Anyone is welcome to join; the minimum donation is $10, the maximum is … well, there is no maximum.  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.

The topic of the seminar is “Do We Have the Original New Testament?”  Among the issues to be covered...

Yet Other Accounts Of the Death of Judas

I try not to repeat blog posts from just a couple of years ago, but in this case I can’t resist.  In the last post I talked about the two accounts of Judas Iscariot’s death in the New Testament, one in Matthew and one in Luke, and argued that even with their intriguing and important similarities, there were also striking differences, some of which, in my judgment, simply cannot be reconciled.   But we have other accounts from Christian antiquity that are at least equally interesting, even if mor...

But How Did Judas Die?

In response to my recent thread on the betrayal of Jesus by Judas Iscariot, a number of readers have asked me about the aftermath.  OK, supposing, as I’m arguing, there really was a Judas, one of Jesus twelve disciples, who betrayed something about Jesus (his whereabouts? his claim to be the future king?) that led to his arrest and execution.  What happened next?   Did Judas really kill himself?

Many people don’t realize that Judas’s death, after he betrayed Jesus, is not mentioned in three of o...

Two Ancient Jesuses and the Current Crises

One of the most important discoveries of critical Biblical scholarship over the past two hundred years – arguably the single most important discovery – is that the Bible does not have a single message about virtually anything.  The Bible is an extremely diverse, multi-faceted book, written over many centuries by many different authors with many different views.  The fact that these sixty-six books were all gathered together and called “Scripture” does not change the fact that the author of one o...

Are Bible Translators Consistent? Readers’ Mailbag

In today’s Reader’s Mailbag I deal with a question that involves both the differences in the manuscripts of the New Testament AND the issue of English Bible translations.  As many of you know, almost all scholars agree that passages such as the “Woman Taken in Adultery,” in John 7:53-8:11 and the last twelve verses of Mark (Jesus’ appearances to his disciples after the resurrection) were not original to the New Testament.  (If you’re not familiar with this issue, see my book Misquoting Jesus and...

Views of Suffering Among Those Who Suffer

There is always a lot of suffering going on around us, if not in our neighborhood then certainly in our country, not to mention our world.  Now more then ever.  And more obviously than ever.  But the “ever” itself is really very bad, when you think of the millions being slaughtered in civil war and unrest, driven from their homes, starving, dying of curable disease for want of medicine or from lack of clean water, etc. etc. etc.

But it’s on our minds right now more than ever, between a worldwide...