Bart D. Ehrman's Blog, page 191

More of the History Behind the Gospel of John

In the last post I began to discuss what we can know about the history of the community that produced (or that produced someone who produced) the Gospel of John.  My argument is that you can use hints in the Gospel to reconstruct what appears to have happened in the community in which and for which it was produced, and reconstructing what these events were can help make sense of how and why the distinctive views of the Gospel developed (or rather, the *various* views, some found in one of its...

Easter Reflection 2020

By all counts, this is the strangest Easter in memory one of the two most important holy days in the year for over two and a half billion people in the world, the vast majority of whom cannot celebrate it together for the first time in their lives.

Even so, for many of these Christians this particular Easter, with the message it brings, could not have come at a better time.  And even for those of who are not Christian, the season brings a powerful message, worth reflecting on.

Even as a...

The History Behind John’s Gospel

In my previous post I explained that there are different (even divergent) understandings of Jesus in the Gospel of John.  I ended, the post by asking the following:  How does one explain these thematic differences among the stories of John?  Social historians would argue that the history of the community affected the ways that it told its stories about Jesus and that critical events in this history led to changes in the communitys understanding of Jesus and his relationship to the people to...

The Divergent Views of Christ in John

Now that I have explained what the socio-historical method is in general terms (in my previous post) I can go on to show how it can be applied to a particular Gospel, in this case, the Gospel of John.  Again, none of this is new and fresh scholarship that I myself came up with; two of the real pioneers of this method were two of the greats of New Testament interpretation in the latter part of the twentieth century, both of whom, remarkably, taught at Union Theological Seminary in New York...

UGH. Lost Comments from April 6

Some bad news, Im afraid.  Yesterday I went to review and post the comments that had come in the previous day (April 6, between noon and midnight).  There was only one.  Normally there are 40-50.   Yup, something was wrong.

Complicated story, but because of a weird technical difficulty involving the back-up system, the comments were sent into the stratosphere.  There were 42 of them.  If you made a comment then and saved it, please resubmit.  If you want to compose it again from scratch, do...

The Blog Podcast and Some New Protocols

We have a lot of new members joining us, some of them (new) paying members (Thank you very much!) and others who are taking advantage of our free two-month offer (welcome!!). Were delighted to have you, and hope you enjoy the blog. Please spread the word!

For newcomers, some information about a couple of additional features of the blog that you may not know about (and a reminder about these for everyone else); and then a couple of notes about protocol on the blog, including a couple of...

The Social History Behind the Fourth Gospel

The New Testament Gospels can be studied like any other piece of literature, since they are, of course, literary texts.  And so over the years scholars have applied a number of literary approaches to unpack the meanings of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.   But in a number of ways these books are different from most literature we encounter otherwise, for example, from antiquity, the writings of Homer or Virgil, or, from the modern world, Dickens, Virginia Woolf, or, well, J. K. Rowling.  These...

Blog Anniversary, 2020!

As I indicated in my previous post, we had our eighth anniversary as a blog two days ago, on April 3.   How things have changed since started this little venture in 2012.   As I have said before, at the time I had no idea how the blog would work or go.   A friend had suggested the idea of a blog over drinks, and I thought it was crazy.  Who has time to do a regular blog?  Lots of people, I guess, since there are millions out there.  But I said: No Way.  So he suggested I do it for money.  I...

CORONA CRISIS OFFER: FREE MEMBERSHIPS TO THE BART EHRMAN BLOG!

FREE MEMBERSHIPS TO THE BART EHRMAN BLOG!

Today is the 8th anniversary of the Bart Ehrman Blog!   A day to celebrate.  But also to commiserate.  Who, on April 3, 2012, would have expected that eight years later we would be in the midst of the most serious world-wide crisis in our lifetime?

I will celebrate the past eight Blog years in my next post.   Today I want to announce the Blogs response to our crisis.

We all know a major part of the current tragedy: many millions of people suddenly and...

So What Sources for Jesus’ Life *Were* Used in the Fourth Gospel?

I have been providing the evidence that the Gospel of John is not a single composition written by a single author sitting down to produce the account at a single time, but is made up of written sources that have all been edited together into the finished product. (See my previous two posts.)

Now I can say something about these sources of Jesus life, teachings, miracles, death, and resurrection.  Again, this is taken from my Introduction to the NT.

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