Bart D. Ehrman's Blog, page 196

Problems with Thinking That Luke Wrote Luke (and Acts)

I continue now with my discussion of whether one of Paul’s traveling companions wrote the account of his life in the book of Acts, and thus, by association, the Gospel of Luke. It turns out to be a really sticky problem — one of those that can’t be solved simply by looking at a couple of verses and applying some basic logic.

In my previous post I gave the logic that is typically adduced for thinking that the Luke was probably written by Luke, the gentile physician who was a companion of Paul...

Once More on the Credibility of Miracles: Guest post by Darren Slade

This will be my final post dealing with the recent book, The Case Against Miracles, edited by John Loftus. As you know, here on the blog we have guest posts from scholars with a wide range of views on the blog, so long as they relate to the issues we are concerned about here, the history and literature of early Christianity, starting with the New Testament. Our guest contributor now is Darren Slade, author of chapter 4 of the book. He supports the same basic view we have seen by the other two...

Did “Luke” Really Write Luke? And the book of Acts?

Here is an important question that I received recently, which I’ve addressed long ago on the blog, before living memory. Time to address it again! The basic issue: isn’t there good evidence that the book of Acts, which describes the spread of Christianity throughout the Roman world, especially through the missionary efforts of Paul, was written by an eyewitness, an actual traveling companion of Paul who was with him for a number of his endeavors? (Whoever the author is, he wrote the Gospel of...

Misunderstandings???

Some blog readers have had a misunderstanding. The blog post on Jan. 2, 2021 on Why Do Christians Try To Convert People was written by *me*, not John Loftus. I’m not sure what created the misunderstanding!

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Was Christianity a Missionary Religion with No Missionaries?

Early Christians were bound and determined to convert others to their faith, as I indicated in my previous post. Or at least that’s what their literature suggests; I very much doubt if *everyone* was! But they certainly did convert people – within four hundred years a tiny handful of the disciples of Jesus’ uneducated and unimpressive disciples had become the official religion of the entire western world.

The interest in making converts made this religion unlike anything else in the Roman...

Why Do Christians Try to Convert People?

I begin this New Year by addressing a really interesting question I received recently from a reader. It’s a question that has rarely occurred to most people. Today, we tend to think that religions are by their very nature interested in converting others to their views, that they just inherently evangelistic, missionary, proselytizing. If you religion is “the right one,” wouldn’t you want everyone to agree with you, so they too could be right, instead of wrong? Wouldn’t their salvation depend...

Blog Year in Review, 2019!

We are at the end of yet another year and I would like to take the occasion to reflect on the blog, how we’ve been doing and where we’re going, now on the cusp of 2020. (Yikes. Already?)

The blog has been doing extremely well. When I started this venture in April 2012, I had no clue what I was getting into, what it would take, and what it would give. It is taking more and giving way more than I anticipated at the time.

I have always had two principal goals, very different from each other but...

The Case Against Miracles: Guest Post by John Loftus

A week ago Michael Shermer posted his Foreword to the new book The Case Against Miracles, edited by John W. Loftus. The book is a collection of essays by various authors who all make arguments that what we think of as miracles — that is (as they understand it) supernatural interventions in the natural world (not just weird things that happen) — cannot be shown ever to have happened, and so should not be believed. John himself has now provided us with an introduction to the volume to describe...

End of the Year Final Exam!

We are near the end of the year. What better time for a final exam?

In my classes I normally give essay exams — they are by far the best way to find out how much a student actually knows (as opposed to testing them for what they don’t know) and how well s/he can express thoughts in writing and develop an argument.

I’ve pulled out an exam that I once gave to my students in a class called Jesus in Scholarship and Film. It’s a terrifically interesting course: we examine ancient Gospels, mainly...

The Life and Message of Paul

I return now to the next portion of a longer post I’m composing on the New Testament, a general survey in what is now looking like 10,000 words or so? My most recent segment was an explanation of what we can know about the life and teaching of Jesus: https://ehrmanblog.org/who-was-jesus/ This one is a corollary: what we can know about the life and message of Paul.

Next to Jesus himself, Paul was the most important figure in the entire history of Christianity. Nearly half the books of the New...