Bart D. Ehrman's Blog, page 206

Why It’s Hard to Publish a Translation: Blast from the Past

In my last post in this thread, en route to discussing my latest attempt at publishing both a scholarly and a trade book on the same topic, I talked about how I took on the task of doing a new Greek-English edition of the Apostolic Fathers for the Loeb Classical Library.  At the end of the post I indicated that doing that edition was one of the hardest things I have ever done.   There were lots of things that made it very difficult – deciding which form of the Greek text to use for each of th...

Can We Reconstruct the Entire New Testament from Quotations of the Church Fathers?

I am making this post free to everyone, so that, if you’re not a member of the blog, you can see what you’re missing.  Every week I make five posts on everything connected to the New Testament and  Christianity of the first four centuries.  Members can read it all, for a small fee.  Every penny of the fee goes to support worthy charities. So why not join?

QUESTION:

Recently you mentioned that your early work involved analysing patristic citations of the New Testament. I believe it has been sa...

Did Superior Health Care Lead to the Dominance of Christianity?

Interesting question from a recent member of the blog:

 

QUESTION:

In the August 5/12 New Yorker, a review of a new book, “The mosquito: A Human History of our Deadliest Predator.” In this review, this sentence: “In the third century, malaria epidemics helped drive people to a small, much persecuted faith that emphasized healing and care of the sick, propelling Christianity into a world-altering religion.” I realize that medical history is not your thing. If nonetheless you’d care to comment,...

On Producing a New Translation of Ancient Texts

I’m in the middle of discussing what it’s like to publish a trade book for general audiences and an  academic book for scholars on the same topic.  The third time I did this involved a completely different situation from the other two I have described.   One thing that was similar was that in this instance, yet again,I had no idea, initially, of producing a popular version, but planned simply to publish a work of scholarship.  Only later did I realize that a trade trade version could be very...

My Two Books on Forgery

In a couple of weeks I will be going to Quebec City to deliver a keynote address for a scholarly conference on Pseudepigraphy in Antiquity; most of the presenters will be giving papers in French (hopefully we’ll have written versions for those of us who can’t pick up the nuances well orally), mine will be in English.  I’ll be saying more about it anon on the blog — the work on the paper is getting me back into the question of ancient forgery, the practice of writing a book falsely claiming to...

Writing Scholarly and Popular Books on the Same Topic

As many of you know, I am now working on a scholarly monograph dealing with an aspect of the afterlife, on the heels of having written a “trade” book (that is, for popular audiences) on the topic more broadly.  The trade book is coming out in March, and will be called Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife; I am nearly finished researching the scholarly book — it’ll take another month or two — and then hope to have it written by the late spring.  It always takes much longer to write the...

Does Isaiah 53 Predict Jesus’ Suffering and Death?

I have been talking about how the view of a future resurrection of the body came from.  This idea, that we would live forever in our bodies (if we were among the “righteous”) was repugnant to just about everyone  in the ancient world.  But it became a widely held view among Jews, and was taken up with passion by the early Christians.  These Christians appealed to the Jewish Bible for support of their view, even though “resurrection” is actually only clearly taught in one passage (Daniel 12:1-...

An Opening for the Blog Dinner NYC August 27

We have had a cancellation for the blog dinner scheduled for 7:00 pm in NYC (Midtown), this coming Tuesday (August 27).  So we have one more seat at the table.  Anyone interested?   If so, email me at behrman@email.unc.edu    Only requirements for attendance: you be a member of the blog, you get there, you pay for your meal, you be interested in talking to us!

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Does Your Soul Go To Heaven?

In my previous post I discussed the beginnings of the Jewish idea of the “resurrection of the dead.”  This view is a pretty much commonplace today: in every Christian church that recites a creed today, and in many conservative churches that do not use creeds, it is believed that at the end of time there will be some kind of judgment and people will be raised from the dead.

At the same time, I have to be frank and say that it seems to me that most Christians – at least the ones I know (not jus...

An Alternative View of Suffering and the Idea of Resurrection

In yesterday’s post I was explaining why I do not think we need to point to Zoroastrianism as the source or reason for the views of “the resurrection from the dead” emerged within Judaism.   This view could have arisen within Judaism itself, because of some internal dynamics.  Here in this post I explain how it may have happened.

I begin where I ended yesterday: in ancient Israel, as up to today, there have been people who think that the reason they suffer is because they have sinned and God...