Bart D. Ehrman's Blog, page 325

Writing to Become Famous?

I’ve been referring to the reactions that I received from my former classmates at Moody Bible Institute about some of my posts about what my experience was like there. Some of them, as I indicated, warned me of future judgment. Others made some a rather belittling comment: that I have written my books simply because I have wanted to become famous.

My sense is that nothing I say would ever change someone’s mind if that’s what they are already inclined to think, but I do want to say something a...

The Threat of Judgment

Since I’ve been making these posts about my experience at Moody Bible Institute, I’ve been getting some reactions from former classmates there. Some of these are in a public forum I’m on. Others have been private communications. A few of these have been kind and heartening. Others … not.

Among the latter, some have told me that they pity me because of where I will end up on the day of judgment. Others have suggested that I changed my theological beliefs because that would help me become famou...

Education at Moody

In thinking back on my days at Moody Bible Institute, part of my now-ambivalence has to do with not just what I learned (or more important, what I did not) but also about how the thinking process itself was handled. That has both a downside and an upside, and I would like to say something about both.

I should start by reiterating that I am simply talking about my own personal experience. Everyone’s experience would have been, and was, different. Still, my strong sense is that my experience wa...

My Moody Experience

Here I continue with my reflections on my fundamentalist past.

For me, as an inordinately gung-ho evangelical Christian teenager, passionate about learning about the Bible, Moody Bible Institute was the ideal learning environment. More than just about anyone I knew, even there, I thrived on the academic side of the school. Moody at that time did not give a bachelor’s degree. It was a three-year diploma. For a degree, one needed to transfer credits and go to another college. That’s what I did...

My Fundamentalist Beginning

Lately I’ve been thinking a good deal about my completely ambivalent relationship to my past, in particular in relation to my education at Moody Bible Institute. In part my thinking has been set off by an email I received from my roommate and best friend at the time, and for years, who was the best man in my wedding and confidante and most closest male friend I had ever had. He has remained a committed evangelical Christian all these years and continues in ministry. We never have contact any...

Year Three on the Blog

QUESTION: If I remember right, you just passed the three year mark of the blog. How much have you raised total?

RESPONSE: Right! This will be just a short post to provide an update on the blog. Yes indeed, we passed the three-year mark a month ago, on April 4. I was going to make a post summarizing the year, but other things got in the way and I ended up doing other threads and never got back to it. So I’ll do it now, a month late.

The blog is still doing great and getting ever better, in my...

What Can We Know about the Life of Jesus?

QUESTION: You have stated in your various works that there are some things that we can accept as likely historically true concerning Jesus’ life; his origin in Galilee, his association with John the Baptizer, his crucifixion, etc. For the rest of the episodes in Jesus’ life do we have to content ourselves with contemplation of what this or that gospel tells us about its author and community? Should we just “get over” this desire to know what really happened two thousand years ago?

RESPONSE:...

Truth and History

In my recent post in which I made a paean to memory – which will be the way I end my current book dealing with memory and the historical Jesus — I said the following.

MY REMARK: “The comment that I sometimes get from readers that I find puzzling or disheartening is when they tell me that if there is something in the Gospels that is not historical, then it cannot be true, and if it is not true, then it is not worth reading. My sense is that many readers will find it puzzling or even dishearten...

Another Jewish Miracle Worker

One more post dealing with my memory book before moving on to other things. I thought readers of the blog might be interested in the following passage, where I talk about a famous Jewish teacher who was known, on the basis of eyewitness reports, to heal the sick, cast out demons, and raise the dead. No, I’m not talking about Jesus. I’m talking about the an 18th century holy man, who founded Hasidic Judaism. Here is what I have to say, in the course of my chapter 3. (The following is a relativ...

Steps Toward Publishing the (a) Book

I am now nearly done with the draft of my book Jesus Before the Gospels (whatever it will eventually will be called), and want to say sundry things about the actual writing of the book here near the end. (Before I do: if any of you has any questions about the topic I’m covering or anything relevant you would like me to post on, let me know: if I don’t have issues to address involving memory, the historical Jesus, oral tradition, and so on, I’ll move on to other things on the blog.)

First, in...