Bart D. Ehrman's Blog, page 333

Did Matthew Copy Luke or Luke Matthew?

In this thread, which is supposed to be on the lost writings of early Christianity that I would most like to have discovered, I can’t seem to get away from Q, Several readers have asked a pointed question about Q. If you recall, Q is the hypothetical document that contained principally sayings of Jesus, that was evidently used by Matthew and Luke (but not by Mark) in constructing their Gospels. The logic is that if Matthew and Luke both used Mark (which the vast majority of scholars agree abo...

Q and The Gospel of Thomas

Before I move on to discuss other lost books from early Christianity that I would love to have discovered (I know, this thread could go on forever, since I would like *every* early Christian writing to be discovered) I need to answer a couple of queries that I have received about the Q source.

First, several people have asked me whether it is possible that the Q source is actually what we now call the Gospel of Thomas, one of the books discovered among the so-called Nag Hammadi Library in 194...

Evidence that the Synoptics Are Copying (one another? other sources?)

In yesterday’s post, when talking about the one-time existence of Q, I indicated that scholars have long recognized that there must be some kind of literary relationship among Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the Synoptic Gospels, since they have so many similarities: they tell many of the same stories, often in the same sequence, and sometimes – lots of times – in the very same words. That is to say, someone must be copying someone else, or they are all using the same written sources.

Some of my stu...

The Lost Q Source

I can now return to my thread dealing with a question asked by a reader: if I could choose, which of the lost books from Christian antiquity would I want to be discovered? My first and immediate answer was: the lost letters of Paul. My second answer is what I will deal with here. I would love – we would all love – to have a discovery of Q.

Many readers of the blog will know all about Q. Many will know something about Q. Many will have never heard of Q. So here’s the deal.

Scholars since the 1...

Quickly on the Blog

This won’t be full post, as I’m taking the day off. But I did want to thank everyone who responded to my question about how the blog was going. If you haven’t responded yet, feel free to do so! I do want to hear from you.

There were two comments that have recurred repeatedly that I want to deal with.

Lots of people have expressed a wish that there was a search function for the blog. And, well, there is! If you’ll go the upper right side of your screen on any post, you’ll see a magnifying...

Taking the Temperature of the Blog

I would like to take a brief pause to take the temperature of the blog and to get some feedback from you about how you think it’s going. There are some general issues and one specific concern. If you’re not interested in responding to the general questions, please do skip to the end, to the specific concern, and weigh in with your opinion.

FIRST, THE GENERAL ISSUES. The blog continues to grow and to raise significant money for charity – which, as you know, is its raison d’être. Of course I en...

Paul’s “Exceptional” Letter to the Romans

I wanted to follow up on a comment that I made in my last post about all of Paul’s letters being “occasional” (i.e., written to deal with certain situations that had arisen in his churches), with one partial exception: his letter to the Romans. Now would be a good time to explain why Romans is the exception. Here is what I say about the occasion and purpose of Romans in my discussion of the book in The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings.

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Why I Wish We Had More of Paul’s Letters

In the previous post I began to answer the question of which lost books of early Christianity I would most like to have discovered, and I started my answer with the earliest writings of which we are familiar, the letters of Paul, most of which (presumably) have been lost. I would love for us to find some of them. I doubt if we ever will, but who knows? Maybe someone will announce that one is to be published later this year!

Seriously, we would all love to have more letters from Paul, and not...

Lost Christian Writings: The Letters of Paul

QUESTION:

What lost early Christian books would you most like to have discovered?

RESPONSE:

Ah, this is a tough one. There are lots of Christian writing that I would love to have discovered – all of the ones that have been lost, for example!

But suppose I had to name some in particular. Well, this will take several posts. To begin with, I wish we had the other letters of Paul. Let me explain.

In the New Testament there are thirteen letters that claim Paul as their author. But scholars since the n...

Is “Jehovah” in the Bible?

QUESTION:

How firmly grounded in reality is the claim of Jehovah’s Witnesses that the ‘divine name’ (Jehovah) belongs in the New Testament?

RESPONSE

So this is an interesting question, with several possible ramifications. At first I should explain that the divine name “Jehovah” doesn’t belong in *either* Testament, old or new, in the opinion of most critical scholars, outside the ranks of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. That’s because Jehovah was not the divine name.

So here’s the deal. In the Hebrew Bi...