Bart D. Ehrman's Blog, page 349

Titles of Scholarly Books

In my previous post I talked about how I chose a scholarly-sounding title for my scholarly book on the use of literary forgery in the early Christian tradition. All of the titles for my scholarly books are ones that I’ve chosen, and they are all meant to signal that the book is … scholarly.

A number of my scholarly titles have been very straightforward – informative but not scintillating (and not meant to be scintillating). My first attempt at a title was for my dissertation, and I realized af...

Scholarly vs. Trade Books

In the past thread I was discussing how, on three occasions, I produced both a scholarly book and a trade book for popular audiences on the same topic. I thought that now it would be interesting for me to say a few words about what I see as the difference between these two kinds of books.

On one level, I think the difference would be obvious to anyone who would compare two of the books I’ve mentioned, for example, my scholarly monograph Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in...

The Other Gospels: The Trade Book Version

The edition of the non-canonical Gospels that I’ve been discussing in previous posts (The Apocryphal Gospels: Texts and Translations), which I published with my colleague Zlatko Plese, was meant for academics – professors of New Testament and early Christianity and their graduate students. Most other people, of course, have no need or desire to see the original Greek, Latin, or Coptic of a text along with a translation. People generally just want an English translation.

But having a facing-pag...

Apocryphal Gospels: The Scholarly Version

In my last couple of posts I began to describe how my edition of the Apocryphal Gospels came about. After having done the Apostolic Fathers in two volumes for the Loeb, I had decided never to do another translation project again. Too hard! But then, forgetting my decision, I thought it would be useful to have a Greek/Latin – English version of the early Christian non-canonical Gospels. And at the urging of the editor at Harvard, submitted a proposal also for the Loeb Classical Library. But th...

Suggested Donation for the Blog

With this post I would like to request that everyone on the blog consider making a donation, above and beyond your membership fee. I know that some of you simply cannot afford to do so, and that, of course, is absolutely fine. Others of you simply do not want to do so, and that also is absolutely fine. But if you have the means and the will, I would very much like you to consider my request.

My proposed amount is $20. If everyone were to make a donation of that amount, we would stand a very go...

How I Decided to Publish the Apocryphal Gospels

My previous two posts were meant to be a kind of lead-up to this one; this thread started by my talking about the times I have published both a scholarly work and a trade book for popular audiences on the same topic. The third and most recent time had to do with an edition of the Apocryphal Gospels. I’ve now given some of the backstory: I had done a translation project creating a new bi-lingual edition of the Apostolic Fathers for the Loeb Classical Library, and had vowed I would never do som...

The Difficulties of Publishing a Translation

In my last post, en route to discussing my latest attempt at publishing both a scholarly and a trade book on the same topic, I talked about how I took on the task of doing a new Greek-English edition of the Apostolic Fathers for the Loeb Classical Library. At the end of the post I indicated that doing that edition was one of the hardest things I have ever done. There were lots of things that made it very difficult – deciding which form of the Greek text to use for each of the writings include...

My Third Scholarly and Trade Book Combination, Told Tangentally

The third time I produced both a scholarly and a trade book on the same topic was a completely different situation from the other two I have described. One thing that was similar was that in this instance yet again I had no idea, initially, of producing a trade version, but planned simply to publish a work of scholarship. Only later did I realize that a trade version could be very useful.

This scholarly book – trade book combination involved an edition of the apocryphal Gospels. To explain how...

My Scholarly and Trade Books on Forgery

A couple of posts ago I mentioned the books that I anticipate writing in the future. I like to plan my life in advance. I like to plan my week in advance. I like to plan my day in advance. I like to plan. For my current ten-year publishing plan, the two immediate goals are not so immediate, as they will take three or four years, I should think. The next book, I hope, will be the trade book for popular audiences on the oral traditions of Jesus in the years before the Gospels were written; that...

Trade Books and Scholarly Books

I indicated in my previous post that I would say a few things about each of the books that I am planning – today at least – to try to write over the next ten years or so. The very next book will be trade book on Jesus Before the Gospels, a study of what happened to the stories about Jesus as they were altered, and invented, by Christians circulating them word of mouth before the writing of the Gospels. The next book after that will be a scholarly treatment of the same thing. Or that’s the pla...