Bart D. Ehrman's Blog, page 235

How the Gospel of Thomas Was Discovered

A few days ago I responded to a reader’s comment by saying something about how I am reluctant these days to label the Gospel of Thomas a “Gnostic” Gospel.  Several readers responded to my comment by asking what in the blazes I could possibly mean.  So I thought I would respond.  But then I realized that to make sense of anything I have to say about the matter will require me to start at the beginning — since some readers won’t know what the Gospel of Thomas is or how it was discovered or anyt...

Finishing my Dissertation

This is the third and final post I’ll do on my dissertation the Gospel quotations in the writings of Didymus the Blind, advised by great New Testament scholar Bruce Metzger.

 

Different dissertation advisors have different approaches to supervising a dissertation. Some are extremely hands on, to the point of working over every thought and every sentence. Not too many are like that, because if they were, they would never do anything else with their life. Plus, the idea is for the student to fi...

The Core of My Dissertation on The Gospel Quotations of Didymus the Blind

Here is the second of three posts on how Bruce Metzger directed my rather technical dissertation on the Gospel quotations of the fourth-century church father Didymus the Blind, from six years ago on the blog.

THIS IS A CONTINUATION OF MY POSTS OF MY RELATIONSHIP WITH BRUCE METZGER, MY MENTOR

As I started thinking about how to write up this second post on my dissertation (the first post was posted some days ago), I remembered one of my clearest pieces of advice that I ever gave to myself, many...

Bruce Metzger and Me: Finding a Dissertation

Bruce Metzger, my mentor in graduate school, for both my Master’s degree and my PhD, has been invoked a number of times in recent comments on the blog.  I thought it might be interesting to repost a few reminiscences I made about my work with him.  These come from posts that appeared six years ago — when most of you weren’t on the blog.   They will all be on my dissertation.

When I entered my PhD program at Princeton Theological Seminary, I knew already that I wanted to specialize in the stud...

Is 1 Clement Older than Some Books of the New Testament?

This will be my final post on the book of 1 Clement.  Now that I’ve summarized what the book is about and said something about its author, I can turn to the original question I was asked, about its date.  The time of its writing is an important question, for a reason you might not suspect.

It is almost always said – I myself regularly say this, as a kind of simple “short hand,” knowing that it’s probably not literally true, that the books of the New Testament are the “earliest” Christian writ...

Did a “Pope” Write the First-Century Book of 1 Clement?

I return her to the book of 1 Clement, probably unknown to many people on the blog, but an important work written at about the time of some of some of the writings of the New Testament – or so I’ll b arguing in the post after this.  First I need to say something about the author.  Why is it attributed to someone named Clement?   Could this really have been written by a first-century pope (i.e., the Bishop of the church in Rome)?

Again, I am taking this information from the Introduction to the...

The Letter of First Clement: An Overview

I received a request recently about one of the “Apostolic Fathers.”  This term does not refer to just any of the post-canonical writers of early Christianity, but to a specific group of ten (or eleven, depending on how you count) authors who were later considered “authoritative” in some sense by proto-orthodox thinkers, but were believed to have been writing after the NT period.  They include letters by Ignatius of Antioch and Polycarp of Smyrna, and texts called 1 and 2 Clement, the Epistle...

Blog Dinner in Durham in September is Full!

Table is full for the Sept. 24 blog dinner in Durham.  Many thanks to all responded, and apologies to those who didn’t make it this time.  There will definitely be a next time!

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Was Jesus Thought To Be a Miracle Worker in His Own Lifetime?

This is the final, and most important, of my posts on the miracles of Jesus.  In it I raise the question – without being able to come to an absolutely definitive answer – of whether Jesus was thought to be a miracle worker already in his life time or if, instead, miracles came to be ascribed to him only later by followers who believed he had been raised from the dead.  I incline toward the latter view.

To set the stage for and make sense of what I have to say, I include the final comments fro...

The Message of Jesus’ Miracles

I have been talking about the stories of Jesus’ miracles, and am raising the question of whether they necessarily go all the way back to Jesus’ lifetime, as tales told while he was still living.  I pick up where I left off last time, after showing that Jesus’ miracle-working abilities increased with the passing of time.

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Not only does Jesus become increasingly miraculous with the passing of time, these miracles are all told in o...