Bart D. Ehrman's Blog, page 282

How We Got the Hebrew Bible

Here at last I can summarize what modern scholars say about the formation of the canon of the Hebrew Bible (the Christian Old Testament). It’s a fascinating topic, of relevance, of course, to Jews, Christians, and anyone else who thinks the history of our civilization matters! This summary is taken from my book The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction (If the terms I use here don’t make sense: read the preceding two posts!)

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How We Got the Hebrew Bible: The Older View

Now that I’ve given some terms and definitions (in yesterday’s post) I can start talking about how it is we got the books of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: who chose the books to include, when they did so, and on the basis of what criteria. Before laying out what scholars today tend to think, I need to provide some information about what *used* to be the standard view (this older view is still held by some, who are not abreast on changes in scholarship over the past twenty or thirty years.)...

What is the Hebrew Bible?

In response to my previous two posts about how the Hebrew Bible came to be copied over the years, several readers have asked me a related (though also very different) question about how the books of the Hebrew Bible were chosen – why do we have these books and not some others? Who decided what the canon of the Hebrew Bible would be? When did they decide? And what were their criteria? These are important questions, and even though not quite as directly related to the thread I’m making my way t...

Looking Back on the Blog 2016

The end is near! Or at least the end of 2016. For some of us this has been a nightmare year that we are glad to see behind us. For others it has been a year of unusual success, prosperity, and happiness, a utopian cornucopia. Whichever camp you are in (most of us are somewhere in between), I hope you can look forward with some hope to what lies ahead.

This will be an end-of-the-year post, summarizing what we have accomplished on the blog over the past twelve months and thinking a bit about wh...

The Copying of the Hebrew Bible

Here I continue on with my comments on the manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible, and the question of whether they were changed over the years. Again, this is taken from my discussion in The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction.

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The Masoretic Text

The text of the Hebrew Bible that is read today and that is at the basis of all modern translations is called the Masoretic Text. It is called this because the Jewish schol...

Manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible

Just now I started to write a post dealing with what it is exactly that translators (such as those of the New Revised Standard Version) translated when they translated their texts. I realized that to explain that I have to say something about the surviving Hebrew manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible – something I have not talked a *great* deal about on the blog in the past, and about the Greek manuscripts of the New Testament – about which I have said a good deal more. My comments on the Hebrew Bi...

Some Arduous Tasks for the New Revised Standard Version

I had several duties as the research assistant to the translation committee of the New Revised Standard Version in 1987-88,. Probably the most difficult involved trying to make sure that there was a consistency in the translation, from one biblical book, passage, and verse to another. How does one determine if a translation is internally consistent? It’s not easy. I had to work through the entire translation, and whenever I came across a key term in the Hebrew or Greek that had been rendered...

Finishing the Work of a Translation

I have mentioned that as a graduate student I was asked to be one of the “secretaries” for the New Revised Standard Version translation committee when they were meeting twice a year to make decisions for the new translation, recording the decisions they made for changing the older Revised Standard Version translation. I did that for several years until they had finished their translation. I graduated from my PhD program in 1985, and I was already, at that point, teaching at Rutgers University...

A Reflection on Christmas: Blast from the Past

Four years ago I made a very personal post about my feelings about Christmas, the day after. It was one of my personal favorite posts of all time. I repeat it again here, this time the day before.

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In the opening chapter of my bookGod’s Problem, I talked about going to church on Christmas Eve in 2006 with my wife Sarah and brother-in-law Simon, in Saffron-Walden, a market town in England where Simon lives, not far from Cambridge. It...

Problems with Inclusive Language Bible Translation

From the marvels of the universe (yesterday’s post) to the use of inclusive language in Bible translations (today’s post) – easy! All in one step.

The Psalm I quoted yesterday presents a problem to Bible translators who want to render the text to include both men and women. Here is what Psalm 8 says in the (non-inclusive-language) King James, as quoted yesterday:

3When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;

4What is man, that thou ar...