Bart D. Ehrman's Blog, page 230

Do Any Forgeries Claim to be Written by Jesus?

I have received an interesting question about ancient forgeries.  If we have lots of forgeries in the name of Peter — and lots of others in the names of other apostles: Paul, James, Jude, Thomas, Philip, etc. etc. — why don’t we have any forgeries allegedly written by Jesus himself?  As it turns out we do.  The most famous was, at one time, well known indeed.

Here is the question and my response.

QUESTION:

If Peter was named as an author of these works, why not name Jesus then of others(that...

Gift Memberships 2018!

It is already December (sigh….) and we are now blasting from one holiday to the next.  For the occasion, I want to open up a holiday giving option that can help out people who really want to be on the blog but cannot afford the membership fees.

As many of you know, for the past five of years, thanks to a number of generous donors, we pulled this off in a big way.  It has happened in two stages.   It started off when two anonymous donors proposed that they provide some funds to pay for members...

Could Peter Have “Written” 1 and 2 Peter Some Other Way?

Here is the last of my three posts digging down deeper into the question of whether Peter would have, or could have, written the books we now call 1 and 2 Peter, composed in highly literate Greek by someone skilled in Greek composition.

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

It should come as no surprise that Peter could not write Greek (or Aramaic, for that matter).  As it turns out, there is New Testament evidence about Peter’s education level...

Were First-Century Jewish Boys Taught to Read and Write?

In this post I continue to dig down into whether a poor Aramaic-speaking fisherman in rural Galilee could compose a highly sophisticated Greek treatise such as 1 Peter.  In my last post I dealt broadly with the question of how many people in antiquity could write.  In this post I turn my attention to Peter’s own historical context, Roman Palestine.  Is it true that boys were consistently taught literacy there and that it’s plausible that one of them could write rhetorically effective Greek co...

Seriously. How Many People in Antiquity Could Write?

I have received some push-back from readers who object to my view that Simon Peter, Jesus’ disciple, a fisherman from rural Galilee whose native language was Aramaic, living among lower-class people who spoke Aramaic, almost certainly could not have written a highly stylized and sophisticated Greek treatise such as we find in the book of 1 Peter.   My sense is that I will never convince anyone who thinks that it is simply “common sense” that of course he could learn to write Greek if he wante...

Who Wrote 1 Peter?

This post is to close out my discussion of 1 Peter, from the New Testament.  Who actually wrote it?  Spoiler alert: we don’t know, but it probably wasn’t Peter.

On several occasions on the blog I’ve talked about the issue, most recently at length in a repost earlier this year: https://ehrmanblog.org/did-peter-use-a-secretary-for-his-writings-a-blast-from-the-past/  That’s where I give the fuller story.  For now I give just the simple side of things, as I lay it out in my undergraduate textboo...

The Situation Behind the (“Forged”) Book of 1 Peter

I am in the midst of talking about works attributed to Peter, the chief disciple, which have come down to us from the early church.  I should be clear, I think each and every one of these writings was “forged.”   I don’t think Peter himself wrote any of them – 1 Peter, 2 Peter, the Gospel of Peter, the Apocalypse of Peter, or any of the other Petrine works that we now have.  Each was written by a different author, but each author claimed to be Peter, Jesus’ right hand man.

The book most widel...

The So-Called First Letter of Peter

I am nearly at the end of my discussion of “Petrine” works in early Christianity, the books that some early Christian or another had been written by Peter, the closest disciple to Jesus in the New Testament.  There are other books connected with Peter that I have chosen not to talk about, at least at this point, including legendary accounts of his missionary activities, some of which are really interesting and were, at one point, highly influential.

At this stage, though, I’m talking only abo...

Thanksgiving Musings 2018

Some musings on this Thanksgiving, 2018.

To be honest, like so many others, I find it much easier to be thankful when I have a lot to be thankful for.  I suppose being a truly thankful person would entail being thankful even when most of life was very hard and difficult.   I’ve had times like that in my life, and at least as I recall, even then I found things to be thankful for – a loving family and the possibility, at least, of a good future at least.  But lots and lots of people don’t have...

Deciding on Which Books Should Be in the New Testament

I am in the midst of a thread in which I explain why it is puzzling that the Apocalypse of Peter did not make it into the New Testament, when the book of 2 Peter did.   So far I have talked about both books, as well as the Gospel of Peter, another Petrine book that did not “make it.”  Now I need to explain how church fathers decided which books would be accepted as official scripture and which not.  I’ve dealt with the issue on the blog several times over the years, the first time being in re...