Bart D. Ehrman's Blog, page 285

Jesus, The Law, and the New Covenant

This past week I gave a lecture at the University of Michigan called “Jesus, the Law, and the New Covenant.” The occasion was a symposium in honor of the life and work of Old Testament scholar George Mendenhall. I never knew Mendenhall. He was a highly prominent figure in the field of Hebrew Bible in the middle of the 20th century, known especially for his work on the significance of “covenant” for understanding both the Hebrew Bible and the history of the Israelites. The symposium itself was...

(Later) Early Christian Understandings of Heaven and Hell

Yesterday I gave Part One of a two-part discussion of the “invention” of heaven and hell, from my book Jesus Interrupted. There I sketched out the apocalyptic vision of what would happen at the end of time as the original view among the followers of Jesus. Here is where I continue that discussion into some reflections of where the Christian teachings of the afterlife, as later formulated, came from.

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The Transformation of the Apocalyptic Vision

W...

Jesus and Paul on Heaven and Hell

A couple of days ago I indicated on the blog that I am thinking about devoting my next book to the “Invention of the Afterlife” – that is, to the question of where the Christian doctrines of heaven and hell came come. I asked for comments (and I still welcome them) from people about what they would be interested in seeing in a book like that. Many, many thanks to everyone who has (so far!) responded to my request!

As some of you know, I have already written a *bit* about the topic in an earli...

Why Don’t I Call Myself a Christian? Mailbag: October 8, 2016

I’ve decided to address two personal questions in this week’s Readers’ Mailbag, one about why I don’t want to call myself a Christian and the other about where the idea for this blog came from. If you have questions you would like me to address, either personal or dealing with anything having to do with the NT and the history of early Christianity, just make a comment on any post and ask them!

QUESTION:

I find it interesting that you and Lüdemann each create an extremely narrow rule separati...

The Invention of the Afterlife: Request for Ideas!

Toward the end of this post I will be asking for your opinions and ideas. So I hope you get that far!

Now that I have sent my manuscript on The Triumph of Christianity off to my editor, and before she gets back to me for revisions and edits, I am turning my thoughts to the next book. The reality is that I am not 100% certain what it will be. That still has to be worked out, negotiated, and approved by the publisher. I’m committed to Simon & Schuster for this next book, as well as Triumph (we...

How I Learned To Write for a General Audience

It is time — after many fits, starts, and interruptions — to bring this thread to a close, the thread that started with my saying I wanted to explain why I was in a better position to write trade books (for a general audience) than most of my peers who were with me in my New Testament PhD program and others in the guild of New Testament studies.

I won’t re-discuss all the background I gave over a long series of posts, but I do need to summarize the one most important point. Almost everyone I...

Gerd Luedemann on the Resurrection: A Blast From the Past

Here is an interesting post on the resurrection of Jesus that I made almost exactly four years ago today. It’s interesting because (a) I don’t remember writing it (and only vaguely remember having read the book) and (b) my own views ended up being very similar indeed (even though I don’t at all remember being influenced by the book!). These are views not widely shared by my colleagues in the field of New Testament studies, as will seem obvious (since most of my colleagues are committed Chris...

The Inerrancy of the Bible? And Those Who Doubt. Readers’ Mailbag October 2, 2016

How did I deal with inconsistencies and discrepancies as a young Christian? And why does the NT indicate that some of Jesus’ own followers doubted the resurrection? Those are the two questions I deal with in this week’s readers’ mailbag.

QUESTION:

I assume that Bart Ehrman today when he reads the books of the New Testament sees large discrepancies between them. My question is about the precocious sixteen-year-old Ehrman, Did he too see this variety (which opens up the possibility of inconsis...

The Process of Publishing a Book

I mentioned yesterday that I have now sent in my manuscript on The Triumph of Christianity to my editor at Simon & Schuster. It occurs to me that readers might be interested in knowing how the editorial process works. I know I was almost completely ignorant of the process when I first started publishing books. My unreflective thought then is that once I would finish writing a book and editing it as best I could, the process would be more or less over, without much left to do. Wrong. The proce...

Writing Books that Are Interesting and Important

Last week I interrupted the thread I had been pursuing about why my unusual academic background prepared me to write books for general audiences in order to talk about my lecture in Odense, Denmark, at the University of Southern Denmark, on the relationship between the worship of the Roman emperor and the rise of Christian understandings of Christ as “Savior” and “Lord” and “God” (titles given to the emperor as well). There is more to be said about this latter topic, some of it very interesti...