Bart D. Ehrman's Blog, page 243

Are Christians Intolerant?

It’s a big question whether Christianity on the whole should be seen as “tolerant”– that is, does it accept the validity of other faith traditions or not?   My sense is that some Christians do, many don’t, and most probably don’t think about it much.   It is a particularly interesting question to ask with respect to Christianity in the *ancient* world.

The reason is that when Christians were being persecuted in the second, third, and early fourth centuries, their leaders / writers pled for re...

When Christianity Became the “Official” Religion of Rome

I have been discussing when Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire.  It was not under Constantine, or even one of his sons who succeeded him on the throne.  It was only at the end of the fourth century, during the reign of Theodosius.  Here is what I say in my book about that new situation some seven decades after the conversion of Constantine.

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When Julian was killed in a poorly-conceived and even more poorly-...

Making Rome Pagan Again

After Constantine converted to Christianity, every Roman emperor, for all time, was Christian – with one brief exception: his nephew Julian, most frequently referred to as Julian the Apostate, who ruled for nineteen months in 361-63 CE.   This short reign was highly significant: Julian tried to turn the empire back to the ways and worship of paganism.  He is called “the Apostate” because he started out as Christian but then opted to worship the traditional gods of Rome.  And he tried to enfor...

The Beginning of the End of Paganism

I have decided to pursue further the question of how, in the fourth century, Christianity took over the Roman imperial government (at the highest levels) leading to the proscription of pagan practices.   For that I will rely on a couple of extracts from my book,  The Triumph of Christianity, over a few posts.   Here is the continuation of the story after the death of Constantine.

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Constantine’s father Constantius became Caesar o...

Did Constantine Outlaw the Pagan Religions?

In today’s mailbag I deal with an interesting question about when, exactly, Christianity became the state religion of Rome and the traditional pagan religions were outlawed.   Was it during the reign of Constantine (as is popularly imagined?)?  Later?   At the end of the fourth century?   Here’s the question.

 

QUESTION:

I was listening to The Great Courses lectures on Early Middle Ages by professor Philip Daileader and he mentions that Christianity was made the official state religion of the...

Fresh Air – Christianity’s Path From ‘Forbidden’ To A ‘Triumph’

On March 20, 2018 I had an interview with Terry Gross for her NPR radio program Fresh Air, about my book The Triumph of Christianity: How A Forbidden Religion Swept the World.   I believe this is the seventh time I’ve done her program (the first one was for my book Lost Christianities, maybe fifteen years ago).  I thought way back then, and I still think now, that she’s the best interviewer on the planet.

The show runs for about 45 minutes, but we talked for twice that long . On the upside, t...

What It Takes to be a Graduate Student

I often get questions from people who have been in a career for a while who want to know if it is feasible for them to go back to school and get a PhD in my field of New Testament/Early Christianity.  In most cases it is not feasible at all, simply because it is way too complicated and involved — and takes way more time than one would think.  Here is what I said about what being a graduate student working toward a PhD involves, from my perspective as one who teaches these students.

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The Different Terms for Literary Deception

In the Seminar on Ancient Forgery at Rice University a few days ago, I made a presentation in which I urged (all of us) scholars to decide on which terms we use to describe different kinds of literary phenomena associated in one way or another with literary deceit.

My view is that since there are different phenomena (even if these can overlap), we ought to have distinct terms to refer to them – otherwise it just gets confusing.  It can be confusing to have so many different terms as well, but...

Different Kinds of Literary Deceit

In my presentation to the seminar on forgery at Rice University a few days ago, I dealt with a problem facing scholars who study literary deceit in antiquity.   On the most basic level, no one – even experts – seems to agree even on which terms to use to describe this or that kind of ancient deceptive practice.   It would be worth devoting a couple of blog posts to the issue.  As it turns out, it was also subject of a lecture I gave at a conference at York University in Toronto a few years ag...

A Forger Fooled By Forgery

In my previous post I talked about my scholarly book on forgery (Forgery and Counterforgery) and gave some of the opening paragraphs of the Introduction.  Here I’ll give the very first part of the first chapter.  I wanted to start out on a light and humorous note, even though I was writing at a scholarly level.   And so I began with an amusing anecdote from the annals of ancient forgery, a case where a forger was intentionally deceived by someone else’s forgery, to his deep chagrin.

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