Bart D. Ehrman's Blog, page 239

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...

Blog Dinners Next Month. Interested?

I would like to host two dinners for anyone on the blog who would like to attend.  My idea is to have at least three, but no more than seven, people at each one.  This would be a chance for some direct, personal contact with me and with each other, to have some good food, good drink, and good conversation for a couple of hours.  I will have no agenda – simply talking about things (presumably related to the issues addressed on the blog) that people want to talk about.

The only requirements for...

Is There Sarcasm in the New Testament?

 

Here is an unusually interesting question I have received:

 

QUESTION:

During the time that the New Testament was being written, especially during Paul’s time, did they have in society what we consider sarcasm? Sometimes certain sentences pop out to me as they could have meant them in a sarcastic tone. I know it is probably just me since I am a sarcastic person.

 

RESPONSE:

Now *that’s* an interesting question that I, literally, have never been asked before!   But it’s something I’ve though...

Jesus and His Miracles: Some Interesting Features

In my discussion of whether the historian can deal with the category of miracle, I’m now at the point where I can deal directly with the miracles ascribed to Jesus.   This is an issue that I have dealt with in several books, including, most recently, Jesus Before the Gospels.   It will take three posts for me to cover the waterfront here.  This is how I began dealing with the issue in the book.

 

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The Miracles of Jesus

When one disc...

Did the Original Gospels Describe Jesus’ Miracles?

      While I’m on the topic of miracles, here’s a particularly interesting question I received a long time ago, and my response.

QUESTION:

I have looked up the content of all the papyri I’m aware of (off of links on wikipedia, so who knows if they’re accurate).

It is my understanding that although p52, p90, and p104 are dated around 125-150 AD, they contain fragments of John 18 and Matt 21 only, and that it’s not until 200 AD that manuscripts emerge which actually contain accounts of superna...

More Free Memberships Available

Thanks to the incredible ongoing generosity of members of the blog, I am happy to announce that there are still a limited number of free one-year memberships available.   These have been donated for a single purpose: to allow those who cannot afford the annual membership fee to participate on the blog for a year.   I will assign these memberships strictly on the honor system: if you truly cannot afford the membership fee, but very much want to have full access to the blog, then please contact...

More on the Historical Problem of Miracles

I continue my reflections on the historical problem of miracles with another “blast from the past”:

 

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Yesterday I started to talk about why historians cannot demonstrate that a miracle such as the resurrection happened because doing so requires a set of presuppositions that are not generally shared by historians doing their work. Over the years I’ve thought a lot about this question, and have tried to explain on several occasions why a “...

History is not the Past! Proving Jesus’ Resurrection and Other Miracles

Last week I finished a thread on the criteria scholars use to establish what happened in the life of the historical Jesus.  That series of posts raises an important question: what do historians do about the fact that throughout the Gospels Jesus does lots of miracles — and at the end the greatest miracle of all happens, he is raised from the dead as an immortal being, never to die again?  Can such miracles be demonstrated to have happened historically?

That’s a question I’ve dealt with on the...

My First Taste of Critical Scholarship

In this week’s mailbag I deal with an interesting question about how knowing about a topic is not the same as understanding the scholarship on it.  The question begins by quoting something I said on the blog a while back

 

QUESTION:

Quoting me: “That’s because serious scholarship is itself hard. It’s not an easy read. It’s not like reading your favorite novel.”  Can you recall the first book of serious scholarship that you had to read? Did you think, “Gosh. Maybe this course of study ain’t fo...