Bart D. Ehrman's Blog, page 336

2 Thessalonians as a Forgery: The Theological Argument

I have decided, you may be glad to learn, that this will be my last post giving the reasons that scholars widely consider 2 Thessalonians not to be written by Paul, even though it claims to be written by Paul. In order to make this the last post, I have had to make it unusually long. Again, the point is both to show why scholars think what they do and to show the level at which they have to make their arguments, as opposed to the simple summary that I provide in my trade book Forged. This is...

The Writing Style of 2 Thessalonians

In my previous two posts I started giving the scholarly argument against the authenticity of 2 Thessalonians – that is the argument that even though the letter claims to be written by Paul, it was in fact written by someone else who wanted you, the reader, to think it was written by Paul. In this post I continue that discussion, turning now to the question of the writing style of the letter. Once again, this is taken from my scholarly study, Forgery and Counterforgery. (After this there will...

Do You Have To Believe in the Virgin Birth?

This post will provide a brief respite from my discussion of the authorship of 2 Thessalonians.

I went back “home” to Kansas last week to spend a few days with my mom here before the holiday season. Dutiful son that I am, I took her to church. I go to church about once every year or two, these days, and normally when I go it is to an Episcopal church on Christmas Eve. This was a conservative evangelical Free Methodist Church – one that my mom has attended for many years. It’s not really my sty...

Is 2 Thessalonians Based on 1 Thessalonians?

In my previous post I began giving the scholarly version of why 2 Thessalonians is often considered to be non-Pauline – that is, to be forged in the name of Paul by someone wanting you to think he was Paul even though he was someone else. This discussion is taken from my book Forgery and Counterforgery. Now that I have given a (very) brief sketch of the history of the scholarship on this problem (the previous post) I can begin to discuss the actual evidence. This is where the discussion gets...

2 Thessalonians: The History of the Discussion

In the previous two posts I began to answer why scholars think that some of the letters that go under Paul’s name were not actually written by him. I have focused on the Second Letter to the Thessalonians, which claims to be written by Paul but appears to have been written instead by someone else who wanted his readers to *think* he was Paul. In those two posts I recounted what I said about the matter in my trade book, written for a lay audience, Forged: Writing in the Name of God – Why The B...

The Inauthenticity of 2 Thessalonians: The Simple Reason

In my previous post I started to talk about why scholars recognize that 2 Thessalonians is (or appears to be) by a different author than 1 Thessalonians. There are actually lots of reasons, as I will show in subsequent posts, but for now I’m simply giving my discussion as found in my trade book Forged, written for a non-scholarly audience. Here is my full discussion in that context of the authorship of 2 Thessalonians. As you’ll see, it’s short and to the point. The scholarly discussion is mu...

Pauline Forgeries: 2 Thessalonians as a Test Case

In my previous post I started answering the question of how the letters not by Paul differ from the letters that are by Paul. In that post I pointed out that we know that there were Pauline forgeries in the early church (that is, letters written by authors who were claiming to be Paul when they were in fact someone else). No one doubts that. We have letters from outside the NT that claim to be by Paul but were absolutely not: 3 Corinthians, the Letter to the Laodiceans, and the 12 letters exc...

Forgeries in the Name of Paul

QUESTION: Something I would love to see you talk about is how the letters we think were written by Paul differ from the letters we think were not written by him.

RESPONSE: Yes, this is an all-important question, and one I’ve been interested in for a very long time. As many readers of the blog know, I’ve recently published two books on the broad question of “forgeries” in early Christianity, one of them written for scholars at a fairly dense, academic level, and the other for a lay audience (“n...

Giving Ideas

This post is about two “Gift Ideas” for this Season of Gifts.

First: Holiday Giving! Most of us at this time of year are involved in giving and receiving. And most of us spend a good deal of time scratching our heads trying to figure out what we can give a person – a family member, a friend, a neighbor, a colleague, a boss, a secretary, a baby-sitter, a pet-sitter, a teacher, a golf coach, a knitting club member, a favorite person, a whatever.

Here’s an idea. Why not give a gift subscription to...

Why Do I Devote Myself to Studying the Bible?

QUESTION: The one thing that I do not understand about you is that you have stated you have lost your faith. That being said, how do you continue to work in your field? Have you ever wanted to redirect your academic career to study other subjects?

RESPONSE: I get this question a lot. On one level I understand it: if I don’t believe in the Bible, why would I dedicate my life to studying it, researching about it, writing about it, and teaching about it? From the perspective of someone who has st...