Bart D. Ehrman's Blog, page 352

Christ as an Angel in Paul

This will be my final set of comments on the evaluation of How Jesus Became God by Larry Hurtado, on his blog. His review consisted of a set of positive comments, of things that he appreciated (for which I’m grateful); several misreadings of my positions, in which Larry indicates that my book was asserting a view that, in fact, it was not (he corrected those after our back and forth in a subsequent post); one assertion that I was motivated by an anti-Christian agenda and wanted to convince re...

Why I (Actually) Discuss Hallucinations

In this post I continue with my response to Larry Hurtado’s critique of How Jesus Became God. In the previous posts I dealt with factual errors – where he assigned views to me that I do not state and do not have. As I have pointed out, Larry was generous to retract these critiques in a subsequent post on his blog. In this post I want to deal not with a factual mistake but with an assertion he makes about my motive for part of my discussion – an assertion that I take issue with.

One of my major...

More Misreadings of How Jesus Became God

This will be my final post in which I indicate places where Larry Hurtado has critiqued How Jesus Became God by attributing to me views that I don’t have and positions that I have never taken. These are the only positions – the ones that I have never taken – that he charges me with in order to show that I am lacking in expertise and, as an outsider to the field of early Christology, simply don’t know in places what I’m talking about. Yesterday I looked at what he had to say about my views abo...

The Son of Man and Jesus

In my previous post I began to discuss Larry Hurtado’s evaluation of How Jesus Became God. For the link to his initial post, see http://larryhurtado.wordpress.com/2014/05/29/how-jesus-became-god-per-ehrman/ As I indicated, after I read his comments we had some exchanges on email, and he graciously agreed to correct several of his mistaken comments, in which he attributed views to me that I do not have and never expressed in my book. (These views, which I do not hold, are the reasons he claims...

Jesus and the Life of Brian Conference

I have been asked to post the following, and gladly do so! Some of you should try to come!! (What’s a mere plane ride over the pond???)

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The Jesus and Brian conference is nigh. There are still tickets available for this unique, bold and ground-breaking conference on the historical Jesus and his times, looked at via Monty Python’s Life of Brian. It will be taking place at King’s College London, on 20-22 June, and cater...

Larry Hurtado’s Critique of How Jesus Became God

One of the leading scholars of early “Christology” (i.e., early portrayals/beliefs about Christ) in the English speaking world is Larry Hurtado, emeritus professor of New Testament at the University of Edinburgh. Larry is an established New Testament scholar, with additional expertise in such fields as the Gospel of Mark and textual criticism – the area of his dissertation work in the 1970s. I first came to know Larry in connection with textual criticism. He was probably 10 years ahead of me...

The Religion of a Sixteen-Year-Old

I just got home from spending a week in Lawrence Kansas, my home town. As I’ve done now for years, I took my mom fishing in the Ozarks for a few days. She’s 87, and on a walker, but still able to reel them in!

I go back to Lawrence probably three or four times a year, and each time it is like going down memory lane. I left there to go to Moody Bible Institute in 1973, when I was all of 17 years old; I still called it home for years, but never lived there full time, not even in the summers usua...

Thomasine “Gnostics” and Others

In this thread of posts I have been reproducing my comments on Gnosticism from the 2ndedition of my anthology,After the New Testament,to be released in the fall. In addition to the Sethians and the Valentinians, scholars talk about the school of Thomas and about yet other Gnostic groups that are not easy to identify with any of the other three or to group together in any meaningful way. Gnosticism was a messy group of religions! Here is what I say in the Introductions to the Thomasines and th...

Thomasine “Gnostics” and Others (For members)

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The Valentinian Gnostics

In my previous post I reproduced my Introduction to the Sethian Gnostics from the new edition of my reader in early Christianity, After The New Testament, 2ndedition. One other highly important group of Christian Gnostics are known as the Valentinians. Here is what I say about them in the book

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Valentinians

Unlike the Sethian Gnostics, the Valentinians were named after an actual person, Valentinus, the founder and original leader of the group. W...