Bart D. Ehrman's Blog, page 229

Miraculous Conversions in the Book of Acts

This new box in my New Testament Introduction deals with one of the fascinating and best documented phenomena from early Christianity — that the earliest followers of Jesus were believed to be able to do great miracles, leading to the conversion of outsiders to the new faith.  This notion is recorded already in our earliest sources.  Here is what I say about it from the book of Acts, our first account of the spread of Christianity.

*************************************************************...

Jews and Gentiles in Paul’s Churches

Another one of the new boxes in my textbook on the New Testament

 

*********************************************************

Another Glimpse into the Past

Box 21.2.  Jews and Gentiles in Paul’s Churches

The earliest Christians, immediately after Jesus’ resurrection, were obviously Jews: eleven of the apostles (minus Judas Iscariot) and a handful of women, including Mary Magdalene.  Once these followers came to believe, they converted others they came into contact with – all of them, at first,...

Jesus and Hell

The second of my two boxes today from the new edition of my textbook.  This one of even more pressing importance: what did Jesus think of hell?

*************************************************************

Another Glimpse Into the Past

Box 15.8  Hell in the Teaching of Jesus

Jesus sometimes indicates that on the Day of Judgment sinners will be cast, unburied, into the most unholy, repulsive, God-forsaken place that anyone in Israel could imagine, the valley known as “Gehenna.” He says, for ex...

The Value of Eyewitness Testimony

The first of today’s two-short-posts from new “Boxes” in my New Testament textbook, on a matter of vital importance to anyone interested in knowing about the historical Jesus.

**********************************************************************

What Do You Think?

Box 13.3  The Value of Eyewitness Testimony

 

If you want to know about something that happened in the past – whether in a criminal trial or just among your family and friends – you almost always prefer to learn what an eyewitness...

Discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library and Some Crucial Missing Parts!

I have been making two-posts-a-day, giving the new “boxes” that I’ve written for the seventh edition of my textbook, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings.  Today, as it turns out, the two boxes I was going to post are both about the Nag Hammadi Library (the so-called “Gnostic Gospels”).  So I’ll simply include both of them in this one post.  Happy reading!

***********************************************************

Another Glimpse Into the Past

11.6 The...

The Difference Between Eschatology and Apocalypticism

QUESTION

I have recently been reading John Meier’s books and he almost always calls Jesus (and John the Baptist), eschatological prophets (once stating Jesus having a “tinge of apocalypticism” or something to that effect). And you always refer to Jesus as an “apocalyptic prophet”.   Do you make any distinction  in the terms “eschatological” and “apocalyptic”?

 

RESPONSE

Ah, it’s a good question.  These terms are an endless source of confusion for people – even scholars sometimes.  I think the...

My Own Translation of the New Testament?

Here’s a question I get on occasion, which I addressed fully six years ago on the blog.

QUESTION:

Do you have any plans to publish your own “best” version of the NT in English? From reading several of your books, it does seem as though you probably already have a translation sitting in a drawer somewhere. I have not been able to find scholarly reconstruction that was produced in the last three and a half decades. Most of the newer “translations” are theologically motivated and sound more lik...

Jesus’ Apocalyptic Message in Matthew

Yet another “box” in the new edition of my textbook on the New Testament, this one a rather factual reflection dealing with the heightened apocalypticism found in the Gospel of Matthew.

***********************************************************************

Another Glimpse Into the Past

Box 8.3  Jesus’ Apocalyptic Message in Matthew

As we will see in greater detail in Chapter 16, apocalypticism was a popular worldview among Jews in the first century. Apocalyptic Jews maintained that…

The rest...

Did Jesus Call Himself God?

I am posting two brief posts a day giving the short boxes I include in the new edition of my textbook, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings.   This particular one deals with a topic I’ve addressed several times on the blog, in view of my book How Jesus Became God.

******************************************************************************

What Do You Think?

Box 10.5  Did Jesus Call Himself God?

It is an interesting to ask: “What did Jesus say about h...

How Reliable are Oral Traditions?

Another box in my upcoming new edition of my textbook.

 

********************************

 

Something to Think About

Box 5.3  How Reliable Are Oral Traditions?

If stories of Jesus’ words and deeds were in oral circulation year after year before being written down, how do we know whether they were changed significantly over time?  One way to answer the question is to see how “oral cultures” preserve their traditions generally.

In written cultures, such as ours…

The rest of this post is for blo...