Bart D. Ehrman's Blog, page 254

A Very Strange Saying: From the Gospel of Peter?

As I pointed out yesterday, the “Gospel of Peter” that we have today, discovered in 1886, is unfortunately, only a portion – the only surviving portion – of what was once a complete Gospel. But was it a complete Gospel? Or was it only a passion Gospel (like the later Gospel of Nicodemus) that gave an account only of the trial, death, and resurrection of Jesus? That has long been debated.

I discussed one intriguing view of the matter some years ago on the blog, as follows:

In recent years a Ge...

The Exasperatingly Fragmentary Gospel of Peter: Readers’ Mailbag December 4, 2017

My Readers’ Mailbag is stuffed, and I need to clear out a few questions to make room for others that come in.  So I may be answering more than normal over the next couple of weeks.  Here is one that I find intriguing:

 

QUESTION

If you could choose any currently-fragmentary or otherwise lacunose document from antiquity and magically receive a reconstructed version to read, what would it be?

 

RESPONSE

Wow.   There are lots to choose from.   I would probably come up with different answers on d...

Could Q Have Been Lost? Readers’ Mailbag December 3, 2017

I have received a lot of questions about Q this week.  If you’re wondering about why blog members are interested in a figure from Star Trek, you may want to review this week’s posts.  Here is a question that I find particularly intriguing.

 

QUESTION:

It is hard to believe that Q, if it existed, circulated enough to be used by both but then dropped off the face of the Earth without so much as a mention by an early church father, while references to so many other documents survived (with some...

Last Minute: Dinner on Thursday?

I will be having dinner with several blog members this Thursday in Durham NC, my home turf.   We have had a cancellation, and so there is one more open spot at the table.   If anyone is interested in coming, please contact me at behrman@email.unc.edu   There are no obligations other than showing up, paying for your dinner, and talking about whatever suits your fancy for a couple of hours!

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Redaction Criticism of the Gospels

 

In a previous post I explained why scholars have long held to “Markan Priority,” the view that Mark was the first Gospel written and that Matthew and Luke both used it for constructing their own narratives.   One great pay-off for this conclusion (it really is significant) is that it is possible, given this result, to see how Matthew and Luke have each *modified* Mark in the stories they received from him.  This approach is called “redaction criticism.”  A “redactor” is an editor.  Redactio...

And Then There Was Q

 

After my post yesterday about the “priority of Mark” (the view almost universally held among scholars that Mark was the first Gospel written and that Matthew and Luke used it for many of their own stories) I received a number of queries from readers about the “Q” source.   So I better address that as well.

Matthew and Luke obviously share a number of stories with Mark, but they also share with each other a number of passages not found in Mark.  Most of these passages (all but two of them) i...

Arguments for Markan Priority (that Mark was the first Gospel written)

For reasons related to an unusually convoluted thread (I’d be surprised if anyone can even detect the thread!  I myself barely can – it has to do with Jesus’ view of the afterlife) I need to answer a reader’s question about why scholars think the Gospel of Mark was the first to be written (once I do that, I can show how Luke often changed Mark, which will get me back to Luke’s treatment of Jesus’ rejection in Nazareth, which will get me back to the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, which w...

Jesus’ Death and Resurrection in Mark: Another Blast from the Past

I have been talking about how no one in Mark’s Gospel (as opposed to the other Gospels) knows who Jesus is — not his family, his townsfolk, the Jewish leaders, not even his disciples.  But the reader knows.  Yet  even the reader is not given the full scoop until the end.  Here is how I explain the matter, in a post from years ago.

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Jesus’ Death as the Son of God

It is clear from Mark’s Gospel that Jesus’ disciples never do come to un...

Gift Memberships, 2017!

Thanksgiving has now come and gone (can any of us believe it?) and we are blasting from one holiday to the next.  For the occasion, I want to open up a holiday giving option that can help out people who really want to be on the blog but cannot afford the membership fees.

As many of you know, for the past four of years, thanks to a number of generous donors, we pulled this off in a big way.  It has happened in two stages.   It started off when two anonymous donors proposed that they provide so...

Mark’s Suffering Son of God: A Blast From the Past

In my previous two posts I’ve pointed out that no one seems to understand who Jesus is in the Gospel of Mark.   In this post I want to show how Mark himself understands Jesus.  Here is how I discussed the matter several years ago on the blog.

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Jesus The Suffering Son of God

Throughout the early portions of Mark’s Gospel the reader is given several indications that Jesus will have to die (e.g., 2:20; 3:6). After Peter’s confe...