Bart D. Ehrman's Blog, page 198

Guest Post by James Tabor: The Historian and the Supernatural

I am honored to have a guest post provided for us by James D. Tabor, Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at my sibling-school UNC-Charlotte, and longtime friend. Many of you will know James and his work, as he publishes not only for the scholarly crowd but also for broader audiences. If you want to stir up controversy – that’s the way to go!

And James is no stranger to it, as becomes clear in this post – or rather these two posts. I’ve decided to split them in half to fit in with...

So: Was Luke Luke?

I started this thread over a week ago on the authorship of the Third Gospe and its accompanying volume, the book of Acts, and would like now simply to bring some closure to it before moving on to other things. To sum up: there is a kind of interpretive logic that can lead one to think that the books were written by Luke, a Gentile physician who was a traveling companion of Paul. This is what I myself thought for years, and it was based on this logic, that:

The author of Acts also wrote the...

Does the Book of Acts Accurately Record Paul’s Teachings?

We could deal forever with the question of the historical accuracy of Acts. There are entire books devoted to the problem and even to *aspects* of the problem, and different scholars come to different conclusions. My own view is that since Acts is at odds with Paul just about every time they talk about the same thing, that it is probably not to be taken as very accurate, especially in its detail. In yesterday’s post I dealt with a couple of places where it’s portrayal of Paul’s *actions* seem...

Did *Any* Companion of Paul Write Luke and Acts?

I am circling around the ultimate question of this thread, whether Luke, the companion of Paul, wrote the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts. A big reason this matters: if Paul’s companion, “the gentile physician,” wrote Acts, he had first-hand knowledge of Paul’s life and teachings. That would certainly increase the likelihood that he was giving an authoritative account!

The first step to answering the question — was it written by Luke? — was to show that Paul never *mentions* Luke as a...

How Were People Crucified?

I have always said that people were crucified by being nailed through their *wrists* instead of their hands. I had heard that in college when I was maybe 18, and I’ve been saying it ever since. And I still say it because it’s apparently true. But I never knew how we knew. Was it simply common sense that a nail/stake through the hand would rip out, and needed to go between two strong bones? Or did we have some evidence? And if it’s true that the nail/stake went through the wrist, why do...

Bidding to See My New Book

I have written emails to everyone who has participated in the auction and put in a bid to have a look at my new book before it appears. I *believe* I have managed to contact everyone. If you did put in a bid but did *not* received (today) an email about it, and about what happens in the auction now, please send me an email at behrman@email.unc.edu Many thanks!

I will announce the amount raised at the end of the week.

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Two Brief Comments on intriguing topics: the unknowability of God and scholarly subterfuge!

First:

Several commentors on my post about the imperceptibility of a superior divine being have pointed out that Christians commonly talk about God as beyond our comprehension. Yes indeed!! When I was a fundamentalist we too used to say, all the time, that “God is far beyond anything we can imagine.” And then we would go on and list his characteristics and attributes!

Does the Author of Acts Identify Himself?

In this thread I have been discussing whether Luke, the gentile physician, the traveling companion of Paul, wrote the Third Gospel and the book of Acts. The first point I’ve made, over a couple of posts, is that the idea that Paul *had* a gentile physician as a traveling companion is dubious. That notion is derived from the mention of Luke in the book of Colossians, but Paul almost certainly did not *write* Colossians. Paul does mention a companion named Luke in the book of Philemon, but he...

A Revelatory Moment about “God”

I had a “revelatory moment” last week that I think may have changed my view about “God” for a very long time – or at least about the existence of superior beings far beyond what we can imagine.

As most of you know, I have long been an agnostic-atheist, and as some of you may recall, I define “atheist” differently from most people, at least in relationship to “agnostic.” The word “agnostic” means “don’t know.” Is there a God? I don’t’ know. How could I possibly know? How could you? I know a...

The More Scholarly Argument that Paul did Not Write Colossians

Every now and then I think it’s useful on the blog to shift gears away from explaining at a more popular level what scholars have come to think to showing how scholars make their arguments to one *another*. I don’t want to do this a lot, but it seems that it can be helpful at times, just so blog readers can get a bit of a sense.

Right now I’m in them middle of a thread on whether the author of Luke was really “Luke the gentile physician,” one of Paul’s traveling companions. The only reason...