Bart D. Ehrman's Blog, page 338

Departments of Religious Studies

In my previous post I began to address the question of what we look for when students apply to enter into our PhD program. To make sense of what I have to say about that, I need to give yet more background into what our program *is*. In my previous post I started discussing how programs of religious studies in secular colleges and universities began to appear after WWII.

My department has always claimed to be the first full-fledged Department of Religious Studies in any state university in the...

The Graduate Program in Religious Studies

QUESTION: Can you write something about the background of your PhD students, how you selected them, what makes a prospective doctoral candidate stand out against the pack, whether there is a huge academic gulf between knowledge and argumentative skills of your undergraduates and research students.

RESPONSE: Ah, this is an interesting question, and as I’ve thought about it I’ve realized that there are lots of things that I take for granted about the process of admitting students into our gradua...

Defending Myself

Several times a week I get emails from people who ask what it’s like to be the subject of such vitriolic attack by those who don’t agree with my views. Or they express regret and sorrow that I am so often or viciously attacked. Or they want me to stand up for myself and reply to my attackers. Almost always, when I get one of these emails, I think to myself: Am I being attacked by someone??? Huh. *That’s* interesting.

The reality is that for the most part I’m blissfully unaware of assaults on m...

My Forgery Seminar (Syllabus)

The academic semester, alas, has begun, as of this past Wednesday. As usual, I’ll be teaching two courses. My undergraduate class, as is true every spring, is “Introduction to the New Testament.” My PhD seminar, this term, is “Literary Forgery in the Early Christian Tradition.” I’ve taught this class twice before, but now I have my book (Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literacy Deceit in Early Christian Polemics) to structure the course. I’ve never had one of my books as the focus of...

Matthew’s “Filling Full” of Scripture

In the last post I indicated one way that Matthew understood Jesus to have fulfilled Scripture – a prophet predicted something about the messiah (to be born of a virgin; to be born in Bethlehem, etc.) and Jesus did or experienced what was predicted. There’s a second way as well, one with considerable implications for understanding Matthew’s portrayal of Jesus. Here’s how I talk about it in my textbook on the New Testament

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The sec...

Matthew’s Fulfillment of Scripture Citations

I’ve begun a short thread dealing with how Matthew understood and interpreted and used Scripture. Here is a fuller exposition, the first part of which comes straight from my textbook on the NT and the second part straight from my noggin to the keyboard.

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What is perhaps most striking about Matthew’s account is that it all happens according to divine plan. The Holy Spirit is responsible for Mary’s pregnancy and an angel from heaven al...

Matthew’s Ancient Approach to Scripture

QUESTION: (The following question was raised by a reader who objected to Matthew’s attempt to interpret passages in the Hebrew Bible as having relevance for Jesus – especially passages that appear to have been taken radically out of context). Here’s the question:

Well then, the Christians of Matthew’s day did not read the OT very carefully at all. For example, when Matthew says that Jesus returning from Egypt was a fulfillment of Hosea 11:1 (out of Egypt have I called my son), did he not read...

Did Jesus Exist? Interview by Guy Raz

On April 1, 2012, I had an interview with Guy Raz, previous weekend host of NPR News’ signature afternoon news magazine “All Things Considered” and now host of TED Radio Hour. The topic was my bookDid Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth.

As readers of this blog probably know,there is a large contingent of people claiming that Jesus never did exist. These people are also known as mythicists. As I say int he interview,“It was a surprise to me to see how influential these m...

The Virgin Birth and Jesus’ Brothers

I am now ready to end this thread of posts dealing with the stories of Jesus’ virgin birth – told differently in Matthew and Luke, not at all in John, and seemingly argued against in the Gospel of Mark.

Earlier I should have given some terminology so that we could all be on the sam page. There are different terms that are often confused:

Immaculate Conception. This doctrine is *not* about Jesus’ mother conceiving as a virgin; it is about Mary’s *own* mother and how she conceived Mary. Mary, in...

The Blog Year in Review: 2014

And so, we have come to the end of another year. Most of us will spend at least a bit of time just now reflecting on our lives and our past year. I’d like to take a minute to reflect, as well, on the year we’ve had on the blog.

My sense is that the blog has been and still is going strong. This past year I have made something like 300 separate posts – so nearly six a week. Almost always these posts are around 1000 words – sometimes more, but rarely less. Most of the posts are written fresh ever...