Bart D. Ehrman's Blog, page 200

Is the Bible Inspired by God? Guest Post by Evangelical Apologist Mike Licona

This particular post is free and open to the public.  If you belonged to the blog, you would get five posts a week, for about what it costs to send a letter.  And every penny goes to charity!  So why not join?

Mike Licona has burst on the scene as one of the leading spokespersons for evangelical Christianity and its theological claims, especially that Jesus was physically raised from the dead, that purely historical research can actually demonstrate that it happened, and that the Bible is literally inspired...

Jesus and “Homosexuality”

This post is free and available to everyone.  Most posts on the blog are for members only.  But the good news is that it’s extremely easy and inexpensive to join.  It costs less than 50 cents a week, for five posts of this substance.  You get TONS for your money.  And all proceeds to to charity.  So why not?

Most Christians today who continue to condemn homosexuality, whether in publicly opposing the LGBTQ community or privately assigning people of various sexual identities or non-heterosexual ac...

The Gospel of Thomas and the Other Gospels

Here’s a post from seven years ago that is still very important and intriguing to anyone interested in the NT and early Christianity.   It’s mainly about the most influential and historically important Gospel from outside the New Testament.  I’ve inserted a couple of explanations [in brackets] to update the post.

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One of the benefits of teaching at a research university with a graduate program is that – at least where I am – there are periodic reading groups with other faculty members and graduate...

The Coming Armageddon: I Need Some Suggestions!

As many of you know, my next trade book is tentatively titled: Expecting Armageddon: The book of Revelation and the Imminent End of the World, to be published by Simon & Schuster.  I would like some help from interested lay folk in the reading public with a certain aspect of it, and would love to hear your suggestions.

First let me say that I have not begun any serious research for it yet.  My plan is to get going in a hard-hitting, all-out kind of way in the early summer, depending on how quickly the book I’m...

Are Same-Sex Relations Condemned in the Old Testament?

When people want to show that the Bible condemns same-sex relations – either to justify depriving LGBTQ people of civil rights, to condemn them morally, to preclude them from serving in church offices, or even to participate at all in faith communities (or for any other reason) – there are a few passages that typically get cited, usually with vigor.

I should stress that there are only a few passages that get cited, since out of the entire Bible – thirty-nine books in the Old Testament, twenty-seven...

A Synopsis of Each New Testament Book

The following post is free for anyone who wants to look.  Most posts on the blog are only for members.  The good news is that it’s easy and inexpensive to join.  You get five posts a week, for less than 50 cents.   And every cent goes to charity helping those in need.  So why not join???

 

In my previous post I indicated that I will be doing a short thread that introduces the New Testament very broadly, with the goal of then combining all the posts into one long (4000-5000 word) post that can then be...

Blog Fund-Raising Dinner, December 3

On December 3, at 7:00 pm., I will be holding a new kind of blog event in Durham NC: a fund-raising dinner.  It will be at a nice restaurant to be named later.  We will have a maximum of seven places at the table (along with me, making eight).

For the fund-raising:  the event is $100 per plate, the money to be donated directly to the blog.    Each person will also pay for his or her own meal.

There will be no set agenda for the dinner.  It will be a chance to get to meet each other and talk about matters...

One C. S. Lewis Writing I Relate To

When I became an evangelical Christian in high school, my first introduction to “apologetics” was through the works of C. S. Lewis.  Apologetics involves establishing reasoned ways to “defend the faith” against intellectual attack and to “demonstrate” the superiority of the faith, intellectually, for inquiring minds, in order to convince people.   C. S. Lewis was many things: a brilliant scholar of early modern English at both Oxford and Cambridge (many people don’t know he wrote serious acad...

What Is the New Testament? A Broad Overview

With some very sage outside advice, I have decided to add a new feature to the blog.   Once or twice a week (at least that’s the *plan*) I will create a kind of “general introduction” post, dealing with some broad and basic matter connected with the New Testament, the Historical Jesus, the apostle Paul, the role of women in the church, persecution and martyrdom, heresy and orthodoxy, the development of theology, the Christianization of the empire, etc. etc.   Broad overviews, of the BIG matte...

Losing *Your* Faith?

Are you having a difficult time, losing your faith?  Having doubts, but still trying to hold on?  Or not sure if you want to hold on any longer?

A couple of days ago I mentioned the “Clergy Project” the organization for clergy (“religion professionals”) who have lost their faith and no longer believe in the supernatural.   One of the founders of the project, Linda LaScola, has reminded me that she edits a blog that is completely public (for anyone interested) for just folk like you (not just clergy)...