Bart D. Ehrman's Blog, page 280

My Work for the New Revised Standard Version Committee

QUESTION:

If my memory serves me, you (as a graduate student?) were involved in the development of the NRSV Bible version in 1989. Could you describe your work please?

RESPONSE:

Yes, that’s right. The New Revised Standard Version Committee was appointed by the U.S. National Council of Churches to produce a revision of the famous Revised Standard Version (RSV) of the Bible, which had come out in 1952. Since the time when the RSV had been produced (mainly in the 1940s), many important developme...

Was Cephas Peter? The Rest of the Argument

I have received a number of emails asking me about the Cephas and Peter article I started giving a couple of posts ago, and most of the questions, as it turns out, are answered in the *second* half of the article, which I had originally planned not to provide here on the blog. So now I’ve decided, well—why not?

And so here is the rest of the article for anyone who is interested. For those not interested in all the convoluted ins and outs of the argument, you may want to see the end, the summa...

Cephas and Peter in the Writings of Paul (Who Knew Them)

In my previous post I gave the evidence that in the early church there were writers who maintained that Cephas and Peter were *not* the same person, despite what is explicitly said in John 1:42. As some readers have noted to me, that differentiation *may* have been driven by a very clear and certain reason: in Galatians 2 Paul confronts “Cephas” and blasts him for not understanding the Gospel. Could there have been a major rift between the two most important apostles of early Christianity? Su...

Lecture at Fresno City College

Here is a video of a discussion that I had on my book “How Jesus Became God” at Fresno City College, with Professor of Philosophy Wendell Stephenson, on February 18, 2016 at 7:00p.m. After our back and forth the floor was opened opened to Q&A from the audience.

News release about event: http://www.therampageonline.com/news/...

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Are Cephas and Peter Two Different People?

QUESTION:

I remember your saying that you once – wrongly – entertained a theory about “Cephas” and “Peter” being two different people. I *don’t* remember your explaining why you’d thought that, and what convinced you the theory was wrong. I’d still like to know!

RESPONSE:

I get asked this question on occasion and I’ve decided to do something unusual (for the blog) to answer it. Years ago I wrote a controversial article on the topic for an academic journal. Here I thought it might be interest...

A Different Interpretation of the Mischievous Boy, Jesus

I have decided that I can’t simply post yesterday’s blast from the past about the Infancy Gospel of Thomas and leave it at that, since the way we today tend to read the account (where Jesus seems, to our eyes, to be a Super-Brat) may not be the way it was read in antiquity (believe it or not!). So here is the post that I wrote to explain that, when I first dealt with the matter three years ago.

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I had a great time giv...

Jesus the Superboy: A Blast From the Past

As is my wont, this time of year, I’ve been thinking about the stories of Jesus’ birth and early life for a few days now. And just this instant I was looking at some old posts on the blog, from years ago — and this one turned up from 2013. A matter of ongoing interest: if Jesus was the miracle working Son of God as an adult, what was he like as a kid? We have stories about that from the early church. Here’s the post, occasioned by some lectures I was giving:

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Free Memberships for those Who Need Them!

Thanks to the incredible generosity of members of the blog, I am happy to announce that there are a limited number of free one-year memberships available. These have been donated for a single purpose: to allow those who cannot afford the annual membership fee to participate on the blog for a year. I will assign these memberships strictly on the honor system: if you truly cannot afford the membership fee, but very much want to have full access to the blog, then please contact me.

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A Personal Transition

A week ago today I finally sent off the very last and final version of The Triumph of Christianity to my editor. It is done, as good as I can make it. Now it will go to a copy-editor who will go over it line by line, word by word to make sure the grammar, punctuation, and even spelling is all correct, and to make suggestions for writing style as needed. Depending on the copy-editor, sometimes there are tons of these stylistic suggestions, sometimes hardly any.

As an author, I much prefer the...

Finding Meaning in the Bible: More Responses to my Christmas Article

In the previous post I indicated some of the initial reactions, four years ago, to my Newsweek article on the Gospel stories about Christmas. I received yet more reaction after that old post, and so posted again, dealing this time with people who thought I was too kindly disposed to anyone who found the stories meaningful. Here is what I said at the time. (I still stick by it, for what it’s worth!)

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When the editor at News...