Bart D. Ehrman's Blog, page 329

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...

Misquoting Jesus Interview on WPSU

On March 15, 2007, I had an interview with Patty Satalia for a Pennsylvania State University on Demand Program called “Pennsylvania Inside Out,” on my book “Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why”.

In the interview I discuss how the modern Bible was shaped by mistakes and intentional alterations that were made by early scribes who copied the texts. I also explain how realizing this led me to shift my way of thinking about the Bible.

We also get into the question — th...

York Symposium on Early Christian Apocrypha

I thought some of you might be interested to know about a symposium focusing on early Christian apocrypha that will be taking place in the fall. The schedule for the event has just been sent. If any of you is near there, you should think about going! It looks terrific. It is being organized principally by Tony Burke, along with Brent Landau; they are two very active scholars in the field of apocrypha studies.

Here’s what the lineup looks like.

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My Final Exam for NT

So, classes are officially over here at UNC, and we are in the Final Exam period. Today I gave my final for the Introduction to the New Testament class. As some of you may recall, back in January 2014 I posted on the blog the pop quiz I give the first day of class for this course. It is here, in case you’re interested: http://ehrmanblog.org/new-testament-p... When I give this quiz on the first day, I tell the students that even if they bomb it (which most of them do), it’s nothing comp...

Help! My Views of Memory

I am thinking about ending my book with a kind of Paean to Memory. I expect that some people will find it a bit controversial or even off-putting. Or maybe not! Here is what a draft of the kind of thing I’m thinking about saying. Let me know what you think. (It’s longer than my typical post.)

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Like most authors, I get a lot of email from people who have read my books. I find one of the comments I repeatedly recei...