Bart D. Ehrman's Blog, page 280

Pressing Jeff Siker for Answers: An Intriguing Query and Response

The comments by Jeff Siker on why he is still a Christian even though he, like me, has a thoroughly historical-critical understanding of the Bible (comments posted from four years ago) sparked some interesting responses.  One reader wrote him directly the following pressing questions, and Jeff wrote a reply that I thought was even more germane, interesting, and helpful than the original posts.

Here are the questions and his response (as he forwarded them to me).  Jeff, by the way, has said he...

Jeff Siker Part 2: Why I am a Christian (and yet a New Testament scholar): A Blast From the Past

This is re-post of an interesting set of comments from exactly four years ago by my friend and colleague Jeff Siker, a New Testament scholar who agrees with most of the critical views I have of the New Testament but who is still a believing and practicing Christian. This is part 2.  To make fullest sense of this post, you should read it in conjunction with the one from yesterday.

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Why He Is Still a Christian (And a Biblical Scholar): A Blast From the Past

The past two days I have been giving lectures at Michigan State University.  It’s been great.  I’ve had a number of people ask me after my talks if it is possible to be a Christian and still hold the historical views I do.  My answer — as many on the blog will know — is OF COURSE!  And that has prompted me to want to repost this guest-post from my historian/Christian friend Jeff Siker, posted exactly four years ago today.   Here (over the course of two posts) he explains a bit about his faith...

Ehrman vs Craig: Evidence for Resurrection

Over ten years ago now (March 28, 2006) I had a debate with William Lane Craig at the College of the Holy Cross, on the question: “Is There Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus?” Craig is a conservative evangelical Christian philosopher (yes, a real philosopher — that is, he teaches courses in philosophy and writes about it; but from a very conservative Christian perspective).

I had never met Craig before the debate, and in places the debate gets a little … lively. Even testy. Cr...

Printing Errors in the King James Version

In some rather minor ways, the King James Version is not simply one thing but is many things. By that I mean that over the years there have been minor revisions made to it – most of them very minor indeed, picayune alterations of such things as spelling and punctuation – but revisions nonetheless. Two years after it was originally published, a new edition came out in 1613 that embodied 413 such changes. In 1769 the translation was modernized a bit; that happened again in 1873.

The “New King J...

Does It Mean What It Says? More Problems with the King James

In my previous post I pointed out that the King James Version sometimes uses words and phrases that no longer make sense to most speakers/readers of the English language today. That obviously makes it use complicated. Why would you want to use a study Bible that doesn’t communicate in common English – or in this case, in English that no longer makes sense? I can understand – and heartily support – those who want to read the King James for its sheer beauty and historical significance. But if y...

Problems with the Language of the King James Version

In my Introduction to the New Testament class this semester, I talked on the first day about which Bible translations I would allow students to use for the class. The basic answer: most any modern translation would be fine (though I myself prefer the New Revised Standard Version), but I would not allow paraphrases (which are not actually translations from the original Hebrew and Greek, but are simplifications of previously existing English translations and as a result can be highly interpreti...

How Do We Know What “Most Scholars” Think?

I have received a particularly interesting question that has led to a bit of back and forth between me and a person on the blog. This person pointed out that in my writings I often indicate that a view that I have (e.g., that the Gospel of John was not written by John the son of Zebedee; that the book of Ephesians was not really written by Paul even though the author claims to be Paul; or that the Gospels are all 40-65 years after the death of Jesus, etc.) is held by the majority of scholars....

Leading up to the King James Translation

The King James Version (KJV) is right hailed as one of the great classics – arguably *the* great classic – of English literature. But most people have no idea where it came from and how it came into existence. And so I am going to take a side-path (OK, a tangent) in my thread to devote a few posts to the KJV, also known as the Authorized Version (AV).

To start with, contrary to what a lot of people think, the KJV, which appeared in 1611 under, yup, King James of England, was not the first tra...

Where Did the King James Bible Come From?

What were the King James Bible translators actually translating? You may not have known it from the previous two posts – but that is what I have been getting at, when talking about the first published edition of the Greek New Testament by Erasmus, and the subsequent editions. The King James is deservedly considered of the greatest classics ever produced in the English language. There can be no doubt about its enormous influence on English literature and the English language itself. But as a s...