Bart D. Ehrman's Blog, page 238

Are Matthew and Paul at Odds on the Most Important Issue?

I have been talking about contradictions and their value for knowing about history — about what actually happened in the past.  There are lots of other kinds of ways that passages of the New Testament are at odds with one another.  Sometimes, and more important for many people, they can have very different theological views, sometimes on absolutely key and important issues.  That is a matter I addressed many years ago on the blog, in this post:

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

Are the Gospels Principally Concerned to Show What Actually Happened?

I will not be going through the entirety of the four Gospels to point out how contradictions between one account and another make these texts difficult to use for historical purposes.  My previous post briefly summarized the situation with respect to the birth narratives, and similar statements could be made for numerous events of Jesus’ life as narrated in the Gospels.  In this post I’ll instead make an overall point about the kinds of problems one finds throughout these books.

Recall: the r...

Why Contradictions Matter for Understanding the Life of Jesus

Realizing that there are contradictions in our surviving New Testament texts matters a good deal when it comes to trying to reconstruct the history behind them.  I’ll devote several posts to this question, a couple of dealing with the life of Jesus and at least one other involving the life of Paul.

The basic issue, of course, is that if you have two contradictory witnesses to an event, then they both can’t be right: they contradict one another!   At the point of the contradiction, either one...

Student Excuses: A Blast From the Past

After I posted the story of the mother who called me about her daughter’s failing my class (and then not), a reader of the blog asked me to repeat a post from years ago, of the best excuse I’ve ever received from a student for missing an exam.   I dug around and found it.  It begins with my apologies for not getting to my Mailbag as much as I should, as it grows longer and longer.  The apologies still apply!  And the excuse remains the best I’ve ever gotten.  Here’s the post:

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

The Historical Significance of Contradictions

I have been talking about the contradictions in the Bible and why they matter – not simply to problematize assumptions about the inerrancy of the Bible (“See: there are contradictions!”) but also for other things.  My overarching point is that they matter both for understanding the historical value of the biblical narratives and for appreciating their literary quality.

In terms of historical value, many people read the Bible to know what actually happened in biblical times.  But if the accoun...

Balancing the Scholarly and the Popular

I just flew into London on the red eye this morning.  As many of you know, my wife Sarah is a Brit, and we have lots of family here.   About fifteen years ago we bought a flat in Wimbledon, which is our base of operation when we’re here.  It’s a hoppin’ part of the universe just now, with the tournament starting.   I won’t be going this year, but our sister-in-law Gill (on the blog!), managed to get a couple of tickets for today, so she and Sarah, now, as we speak, are watching Djokovic.  Not...

The Broader Significance(s) of Contradictions

I have been discussing the matter of contradictions in the Bible and the question of why they matter.  My overarching point is that they matter NOT simply so we can say “Aha!  There are contradictions!”  They matter for other things.

The one point I’ve made so far is that they matter for anyone who is committed to the authority of Scripture.  I need to say that I think the point I was trying to make in that post has possibly been misunderstood.  When I asked how the Bible could be authoritati...

The Strangest Moment of My Teaching Career

Here is an interesting question that I sometimes get asked, which brought to mind one of the strangest things that has ever happened to me in my now 34 years of teaching at the university level.

 

QUESTION:

As you teach your students the material, how do you handle those students with an evangelical or fundamentalist background that refuse to accept your findings?

 

RESPONSE:

This is a great question, and I was all set to answer it directly, when it suddenly brought to mind a *related* questi...

If the Bible is Contradictory, How Can it Be Authoritative?

In my previous post I explained why the contradictions found in the Bible affect a certain understanding of the inspiration of Scripture.  The contradictions are not a point in and of themselves (OK, OK, so there are contradictions.  So what?).   There actually is a payoff.  In factd, several.  One of the payoffs is that the fundamentalist Christian claim that the Bible has no mistakes of any kind is almost certainly wrong.   But as I have said this is not the only point or even the most impo...

Are Contradictions the Real Point?

In my last couple of posts I’ve talked about internal contradictions in Luke-Acts and John.  I’ve had several readers tell me that they already “got the point” and so they don’t see any reason for me to keep harping on it: there are contradictions so you don’t think the Bible is inerrant.  OK OK OK, got the point!

As it turns out, that’s not really the point.

To be sure, it is *one* of the points.  But it’s not actually the main one.  If I had to explain fully why it matters that there are in...