Bart D. Ehrman's Blog, page 27

Jewish Sects at the Time of Jesus: The Essenes and the Fourth Philosophy

In my previous post I talked about two of the known Jewish sects from the days of Jesus in Palestine.  The idea that there are specifically four sects comes to us from the late-first-century Jewish historian Josephus, whose many volumes of writings (e.g., on the Jewish War and on Jewish Antiquities – the latter a [...]

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Jewish Sects in the time of Jesus: Pharisees and Sadducees

I am in a short thread discussing Judaism just before and at the time of Jesus.  In that connections, I often get asked about the different Jewish sects in the period. So I'll devote two posts to the question, lifting the discussion from my textbook The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian [...]

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Judaism 200 Years Before Jesus: The Maccabean Revolt

I often get asked about what Judaism was like in the time before and up to Jesus.  It's a vital question, since whatever else you might want to say about Jesus, he was definitely Jewish and the Judaism he was born into, raised in, and accepted was the Judaism of his time (not medieval and [...]

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How to be Content with Life Even When It’s Rotten: The Stoic View

How can you be satisfied and content with life?  Even when it seems rotten on the whole?  With this post I conclude my thread on the ancient Stoic view of life and how to live it. Thus, Stoics understood that the way to live – and to live with eudaimonia (recall: that means a kind [...]

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How Not To Be Bothered When Bad Things Happen: The Stoics

Here I continue trying to explain the ancient philosophy of Stoicism, and to show how it related to their views of ethics – especially with respect to questions of altruism. It is a little difficult for many moderns to get their minds around the Stoic idea that “reason” is a divine quality that infuses the [...]

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Does this World Make Any Sense? The Ancient Stoics

From my earlier posts on altruism in the ancient world before Christianity, a number of blog readers have asked me to say some things specifically about ancient Stoics.  Didn’t they urge altruistic behavior?  Once again, the answer is, well, yes and no.  This will take several posts to explain. Stoicism was by far the most [...]

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Platinum Webinar for December: Topic TBD

Dear Platinum Members, It's time for our Quarterly Platinum Webinar.  We have it scheduled for Thursday, December 5, 2023, at 8:00pm ET. The topic is TBD, but we will update you with that information ahead of the talk. For now, we wanted to give you the date, time, and link so you can mark it [...]

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Intriguing Questions and Attempted Answers!

Here are a couple of the tricky and interesting questions I have received lately on the blog, along with my answers to them.  They seem important enough to me to share more broadly for everyone’s benefit.  As you’ll see, they cover a range of topics.   ****************************** QUESTION: I was wondering if in Paul’s letters [...]

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December 2024 Gold Q&A – Get Your Questions Answered!

Hey Gold & Platinum Members, Bart will be recording the December Gold Q&A on Sunday December 1st at 4pm Eastern Time. Have any questions you've been eager to ask him? Ask anything related to the blog and Bart will do his best to answer. (Bonus points if you can stump him!) Send your questions over [...]

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Isn’t It Good Enough to Help Family, Friends, and Community?

I’ve been discussing Aristotle (really, it’s interesting!) and what he thought it took to be “happy” – not the giddy fleeting emotion but have a satisfying sense of contentment and fulfillment in life.  For him, it means having the most “excellent” life you can and that requires being the most “excellent” person you can and [...]

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