Bart D. Ehrman's Blog, page 241

Non-Disclosure Agreements

Several people have made comments or raised questions about Non-disclosure Agreements with respect to Dan Wallace and the so-called (but no longer) First Century Mark.   For many years Dan refused to explain what he was talking about when he mentioned in the public debate with me in February 2012 a new discovery of a Gospel of Mark that dated to the first century.  In a later post I may say something about why I was immediately skeptical about it (he apparently is going on record now for sayi...

What the New Fragment of Mark’s Gospel Looks like (the so-called First-Century Mark)

Like many of you I have many questions about the bizarre way the discussion of the so-called “First-Century Gospel of Mark” unfolded.  I was intimately connected with the first announcement of the discovery, which was made precisely in order to trump me in a public debate.  As it turns out the announcement was based on false information acquired through hearsay.  But that’s the past, and Dan Wallace has apologized, so that is that.

There are still questions about how the affair unfolded, but...

Did Jesus Do “Signs” To Prove Who He Was? A Blast from the Past

Rummaging through old blog posts, I came across this one from a few years ago.  It is on a topic that I continue to be fascinated by, the significant differences between the Gospel of John and the “Synoptic” Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke.   These three have numerous differences among themselves, of course.  But the differences of the three over against John are really quite striking.   Here is one key instance of that, on a major issue connected with the life of Jesus.  Did he try to pro...

Doing Research for a Trade Book

Before getting side-tracked on other things, I had started to say that I was at a good place on my book on The Invention of the Afterlife and to lay out how I actually write a book like this.  I explained how I choose what book to write next, and I talked about how writing a trade book is very different from writing an academic one.

I’d like to pick up there since I am at the end of a major phase in my preparation for the book, and would like to explain how I typically proceed.

Once you know...

We Do *NOT* Have a First-Century Copy of the Gospel of Mark

As most of us have suspected for years now, there is in fact no first-century copy of the Gospel of Mark.  If fortune smiles upon us, maybe one will eventually be discovered.  But it hasn’t been yet.  Dan Wallace, our lone public source for the existence of such a thing (announced with some flair at a public debate I had with him in 2012) has finally provided the necessary information: his claim that such a copy existed was based on bad information.   He lays it all out here.   https://daniel...

Why Didn’t the Gospel Writers Tell Us Who They Were?

Yesterday I dealt with the issue of anonymous writings in antiquity, what we know about them in general.  Today I deal directly with the question about why the Gospels of the New Testament were all written anonymously, with the authors giving us no indication of who they were.  I have a theory about that, a theory that I’ve never heard or seen before.   Here is how I lay it out in my trade book Forged.

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It is always interesting...

Why Would an Ancient Author Write a Book Anonymously?

In response to yesterday’s post, I received a seemingly simple question that is both intriguing and complex.  I will devote two posts to giving an answer

 

QUESTION:

Why were the gospels written anonymously? Was this the usual practice with this type of account in those times?

 

RESPONSE:

It’s a bit surprising that more attention hasn’t been paid to this question by scholars, who, as a rule, are *far* more interested in proving that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were written by the people nam...

Why Are The Gospels Called Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John?

I recently received an important and puzzling question about the names attached to our four Gospels.  All four books were written and circulated anonymously, and only later did Christian leaders maintain that they were Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.  Why these names?  Here’s the question:

QUESTION:  I understand why the names John and Matthew ended up being part of the tradition concerning authorship for gospels, but why a tradition for Mark and Luke?  Today, they seem like unlikely character...

Do We Know Why Jesus Went to Jerusalem?

Browsing through my blog posts I came across this one from exactly six years ago today.  Amazingly, I still agree with it!  It deals with an unusually important question, one that, in a sense, involves a decision that changed the entire history of our world.

 

QUESTION

Just what did the historical Jesus think he was doing that last week in Jerusalem? It looks to me like he was working as hard as he could to get himself killed. If that’s what he was doing, then why was he doing it?

 

RESPONSE

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The Tricks of Writing for a General Audience

Yesterday I mentioned how hard it is for academics to learn how to write for a general audience.   In graduate school we are trained to write for fellow scholars – learning the jargon and mastering the background knowledge that everyone in the field shares.  That’s because scholarly writing is a kind of short hand for insiders.  If you had to explain every term, every concept, every assumption then what you could say in an article for insiders would literally require a book.

And so you learn...