Bart D. Ehrman's Blog, page 24

Finding Value in Writings You Don’t “Believe” (In response to my Newsweek article on Christmas)

Last week, the final two reprints of my favorite "Posts of Christmas Past" reproduced an article I had written over a decade ago for Newsweek about the Christmas stories of the New Testament.  I received a good bit of blow-back from the article itself, from various directions; that led me to write post explaining my [...]

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2024: Ehrman Blog Year in Review

2024 has been a remarkable year for the Blog.  We have set a record for the amount of money we raised and donated to our charities; we have hired a highly skilled CEO who has taken charge and already made vast improvements, and we have chosen a design company to come up with a whole [...]

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Did Jesus Come to Bring Peace?

Was Jesus’ birth meant to bring peace into the world? One of my favorite Christmas carols is Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,[i] which includes among its memorable lines, “Hail the heaven-born Prince of Peace, Hail the Sun of Righteousness.”  The carol is celebrating the announcement of Jesus’ birth to the shepherds “in the fields by [...]

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A Matching Grant for our End of the Year Giving 2024: Consider the Blog and Its Mission!

The End is Near!  At least the End of 2024…. We are trying very hard to make this the most momentous year of the Blog’s existence (we started in 2012) -- and by that I mean the one that exceeds all others in our primary mission, to raise funds for charities that help those among [...]

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Being Consistently Critical (In the Good Sense)

In my previous post I discussed the difference between approaching the Bible theologically and using it historically. It is often hard to explain to people to that doing "critical" scholarship does not mean being a pain in the neck by criticizing everything.  It means using "critical judgment" in order to to establish what is true.  [...]

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January 2025 Gold Q&A

Dear Gold Members, The New Year is upon us, and with it, another opportunity to get your questions answered by Bart. As you know, the monthly live Q&A session is one of the perks of your elevated status as a gold member of the blog. Mark your calendars! Bart will be recording the session live [...]

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Approaching the New Testament Historically

Now that Christmas has ended it is a good time to reflect more broadly on the difference between reading the Christmas story, and in fact, the Bible as a whole, for its religious significance -- which, of course, is how and why most people read it in the first place -- and trying to consider [...]

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Twelve Days of Christmas Day 12: My Article on Christmas in Newsweek: Part 2

Here now is the twelfth (and final!) of my twelve favorite Christmas posts of years gone by, in our celebration of the Twelve Days of Christmas. ****************************** Yesterday I gave Part 1 of my Newsweek article on Christmas, published in 2012.  Here is Part 2! Most modern readers who are not already familiar with these stories [in [...]

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Twelve Days of Christmas Day 11: My Article on Christmas in Newsweek Part 1

Here now is the eleventh of my twelve favorite Christmas posts of years gone by, in our celebration of the Twelve Days of Christmas. ****************************** I mentioned in my previous post that in 2012 I was asked to write an article on Newsweek about the Christmas story.  Before it appeared I posted it on the blog; here [...]

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Twelve Days of Christmas Day 10: What Can We Know About Jesus’ Birth?

Here now is the tenth of my twelve favorite Christmas posts of years gone by, in our celebration of the Twelve Days of Christmas. ****************************** Browsing through holiday-season blogs from previous eras, I came across my first small thread on Christmas from exactly six years ago.  I had forgotten about this.  Some of the material has shown [...]

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