Bart D. Ehrman's Blog, page 364

Fresh Air with Terry Gross and the Dish Book Club with Andrew Sullivan

I mentioned in an earlier post that the only way a trade book begins to sell well is if it gets media attention. It is really, really hard to get media attention, and there’s very little that an author can personally do about it. Authors have publicists (at the publisher) who try to get attention in print, radio, and TV; that’s what they do for a living, they do it all the time, they have the necessary contacts, and the know-how, and the experience, and so on. But at the end of the day, it is...

Women at the Tomb

Here I’ll continue my thread on topics that I changed my mind about or came to see in doing my research for How Jesus Became God. One of the most important things I changed my mind about was the idea that Jesus’ tomb was discovered empty three days after his death.

When I was a Christian, of course I thought that was the case. But even when I had become an agnostic I thought it was probably a historical tradition: it’s found in all four Gospels, for example, and the fact that the stories indic...

The God Augustus

Yesterday I started a thread dealing with things that I learn, discovered, or changed my mind about in the course of doing the research onHow Jesus Became God. This then is the second post on the topic. In this instance I was struck with a blinding realization of something that I guess I knew for a long time, but it had never nailed me between the eyes before. Once it did, it completely changed how I decided to write the book. Fundamentally changed it. I realized – duh!!! – that the environme...

The God Augustus (For members)

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Jesus as the Adopted Son of God

I would like to devote several posts – maybe half a dozen – to issues that I deal with inHow Jesus Became Godthat represent new insights that I had while doing the research. In most instances these arechangesin what I used to think. (Scholars who never change their minds about something are the ones you the ones you need to look out for!) I’ve never written a trade book where that was the case before (although it happens all the time in doing a serious research monograph). By my count, this i...

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Why It Matters

In my recent Huffington Post article I try to explain why it *matters* that the early followers of Jesus began calling him God, and I try to make the case that it matters not only for Christians (most of whom think Jesus *is* God, so that the development of that doctrine is obviously important) but for all of us, Christian or non-Christian, who are interested in the history of our civilization. My statement to that end has been misunderstood by several, maybe lots (?), of readers, and I need...

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Radio Debate on How Jesus became God: Part 1

As is my wont, I was in England for Spring Break, and while there I was invited to participate in a radio program devoted to my book How Jesus Became God (as I’ve indicated before on the blog). The program was set up to be a radio “debate,” or, well, “friendly exchange of ideas” (it was the latter more than the former) between me and Simon J. Gathercole, who is a Senior Lecturer in New Testament at Cambridge University. Simon is one of the five contributors to the response book How God Became...

Article in the Huffington Post

The Huffington Post has just published an article that I wrote introducingHow Jesus Became God. (Link below) Here’s the article as I wrote it and sent it in. I’ve written several others that I will be providing as well, as soon as they are available in their various venues, plus anything else of related interest.

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Jesus was a lower-class preacher from Galilee, who, in good apocalyptic fashion, proclaimed that the end of history as...