Bart D. Ehrman's Blog, page 372

Jesus’ Crucifixion as King of the Jews

It is often said that one of the best pieces of evidence that Jesus is to be understood as a political insurgent who favored the overthrow of the Roman empire by means of (human) force is that he was crucified on charges of political insurgency. If he was charged with insurgency, he was probably an insurgent. There is, of course, a powerful logic to this view, but it has its flaws, and an alternative explanation actually works better.

In terms of flaws, it needs to be noted and emphasized that...

Jesus’ Crucifixion as King of the Jews (for members)

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Jesus and the Temple

Back to Aslan’sZealot. I will not be going on forever, but I do want to make a few final posts. So far I have shown that the book is filled with mistakes, some of them important, about the ancient world, about the New Testament, and about early Christianity. These are simply errors, things (I tried to show) that Aslan just got wrong. After that I tried to show why the thesis itself was highly problematic by taking on his lead chapter and showing just why the claims he makes don’t “work” histo...

Jesus and the Temple (For Members)

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Looking Ahead to 2014 on the Blog

I’d like to take the opportunity of the New Year to look ahead with you on matters related to the blog. My idea for this post is to tell you what my goals for the coming year are and what challenges we are (or that I am) facing, and then to ask a couple of questions from you, the members, about how best to proceed.

Goals and Challenges

I have several different goals for the blog this coming year.

Financial. This past year, as I indicated in my past post, we pulled in $61,000. That is a significa...

End of the Year Blog Reflection

Here at the end of the year, on this New Year’s Eve, I’m reflecting on the blog and how it has gone over the past 12 months. I’d say this has been a fantastic year. Every now and then (like, every ten minutes) I wonder if it is really worth all the time and effort. I’ve continued to post five or six times a week (usually six), and each post is about 1000 words long. But in addition, I need to approve all the comments that come in, and respond to the ones that have asked for a response. Altoge...

More Evidence that Jesus was an Apocalypticist (For members)

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The Later De-apocalypticizing of Jesus

Yesterday I started mounting the case that rather than being a zealot interested in a military overthrow of the Romans to reclaim the land for God, Jesus was an apocalypticist who believed that God himself would intervene in history to destroy the forces of evil (presumably including the Romans; and certainly including the Jews who were not “on the right side”) to set up his kingdom.

It is worth re-emphasizing that all over the map in our early sources Jesus speaks about the Kingdom of God. He...

The Later De-apocalypticizing of Jesus (For members)

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Back to Aslan’s Thesis. An Alternative View: Jesus the Apocalypticist.

I have spent considerable time showing just how problematic Reza Aslan’s view of Jesus is, as he set it forth in his bestsellingZealot. But it is not enough to attack someone else’s position if you don’t agree with it. You also have to have an alternative that is more attractive. So it’s time to move into that realm.

As I have repeatedly stated on this blog, the view of Jesus that has dominated scholarship since the classic of Albert Schweitzer in 1906,The Quest of the Historical Jesus(actuall...