Bart D. Ehrman's Blog, page 189

A Powerful Film and Some Raw Emotions

As a rule I dont watch a lot of films, but during the crisis Sarah and I have reinstated our weekly movie night, and on Friday we saw Ethan Hawkes First Reformed.   Have you seen it?  I was very reluctant to do so for personal reasons. I thought it would hit to close to home. Oh boy was I right.

Ive always loved Ethan Hawke, from Dead Poets Society onward.  But this one was a bit hard. The movie itself is brilliant, extremely layered and thoughtful. Hawke plays the role of Rev. Toller, the...

Readers Mailbag: Does Isaiah 53 Predict the Death and Resurrection of Jesus?

I would like to get back into the practice of devoting one post a week to answering questions raised by blog members.  I have a fairly long list of good questions I havent been able to get to, so why not just go through them week by week?  If you have any pressing questions that are particularly intriguing or perplexing for you about the NT or early Christianity or any related topic, let me know as a comment on a post (any post will do, whether relevant or not).  If its not something I can...

Were the Gospels Generally Written for “Communities” of Christians: Guest Post by Hugo Mendez

Here now is Hugo Mendezs second post in his thread (started yesterday, if you havent seen it yet), challenging whether the writings of John all emerge from a specific community, as I argued in my previous thread.  In this post he points out how scholars have called into question whether the idea of communities is helpful at all for understanding the early Gospels.

Hugo will be happy to address your questions!  Just post yours as a comment to the post.

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Live Event on Wednesday Evening, May 6!

Join us for the third in a fascinating six-week series of
virtual book club discussions!

This week join NHC president Robert Newman and scholar Bart D. Ehrman to discuss Ehrmans book, Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife

Wednesday, May 6, 2020 at 7:00 pm ET
Facebook Live

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Where do our ideas about heaven and hell come from,
and why do they endure?
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In...

WAS there a Community behind the Gospel and Letters of John? Guest Post by Hugo Mendez

Here we begin a series of posts written by my colleague at UNC, Hugo Mendez.   Hugo has had an intriguing and impressive career.  He did an MA in Religion at University of Georgia, but then his PhD was in Linguistics, also at Georgia.  He went from there onto a two-year postdoctoral fellowship at Yale and retooled to become a New Testament scholar through some, well, incredibly intense study.  He came to UNC as a postdoctoral fellow in 2016 for two years, after which we were fortunate to hire...

Take A Final Exam on the New Testament!

The semester is over at my university, but since Im on leave, it hasnt affected me much.  But I was thinking about it this morning final exams, grading, wrapping up the term and I remembered that some years ago on the blog I posted the final exam I gave to my Introduction to the New Testament course, to see how youd do!

I thought it would be fun and interesting to repost it.  Check it out.  Can you nail it?

So, classes are officially over here at UNC, and we are in the Final Exam period....

Life after Death in the Bible and Beyond: Webinar with Oxford Press

On April 20, 2020, I did a webinar for Oxford University Press.   I have published three textbooks with Oxford and the textbook division has started hosting these events, principally for college and university professors and their students, but anyone is welcome to sign up and join in.   When they asked me if Id be interested, I thought it sounded like a great idea; and when they asked what Id like to do it on, I told them the afterlife.  Of course!  Its what Ive been thinking about and doing...

The Johannine Letters in Sum

This will be the final post in my thread on the Gospel and Letters of John. Here I will reflect further on what we can about the epistles and the context out of which they emerged.

If you want to read more, check out my chapter in The New Testament: A Historical Introduction.   In that chapter I explain how views similar to those found in these Johannine writings eventually contributed to what we now call Gnosticism.  (That, of course, is a whole *other* story.)  As always, at the end of the...

What Are The Epistles of John?

I can now describe and explain the letters of 1, 2, and 3 John.  1 John has always been one of my favorite books of the New Testament, and only takes a few minutes to read; the final two are incredibly short, less than a page each.  Think about reading them!

The author never gives us his name.  But because the books aer so similar in theme and writing style to the Fourth Gospel whose author from antiquity was thought to be Jesus disciple John these letters were also assigned to him. ...

Reading the New Testament Letters in CONTEXT

OK, we return now to some of the books in the New Testament attributed to John.  I have talked at some length about the Gospel of John and the community that appears to lie behind it.  I now move to the three epistles of John, found among the catholic or general epistles near the end of the New Testament.  (When I was at Princeton Seminary, one day I went into the mens room and over the three urinals, in sequence, someone had written, as graffiti, 1 John; 2 John; 3 John.  I guess it was a...