Bart D. Ehrman's Blog, page 380

Jesus: L’enfant terrible?

I just (now) flew into Washington D.C., to give four lectures tomorrow (count them, four) on “The Other Gospels” at the Smithsonian. Each lecture is about an hour, followed by 15 minutes of Q & A. It’ll be a grueling day.

I do these Smithsonian things once or twice a year on average. They’re great – 160 adults who have paid good money and devoted an entire day to hearing lectures on a topic important to them. It’s a terrific audience, wide-ranging, highly intelligent, educated, and curious — r...

Jesus: L’enfant terrible? (For Members)

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Video: Ehrman & Evans 2012 Debate – Part 2

A couple of weeks ago I posted a debate that I had withCraig Evans, an evangelical Christian New Testament scholar. That debate was held at Saint Mary’s University in Nova Scotia. The next night we had a second debate — on the same topic (!) but in a different location, at Acadia University, where Craig currently teaches in the Acadia Divinity College. The topic, again, was “Does the New Testament Present a Historically Reliable Portrait of Jesus.”

I was hesitant to post this debate on the blo...

Jesus the Magician

Some of you will be familiar with the work of Morton Smith, especially on the “Secret Gospel of Mark.” I may have posted a few bits on it at some point. Smith was a brilliant scholar, always the smartest guy in the room. And he knew it. He had a rapier wit and was not afraid to use it. He regularly bloodied people – even internationally famous scholars – who disagreed with him. I met him only a couple of times, when I was a lowly graduate student and he was a mighty professor at Columbia. He...

Jesus the Magician (For Members)

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The Giving Season

The season of giving has come upon us! I have to admit, even though I am not a Christian, I absolutely love the Christmas season. I know there are a lot of things wrong with Christianity, just as there are with every religion. The harm, the evil, done in the name of Christ is enough to make my skin crawl. But at the same time, there is a lot of good, and I see no reason to deny it. At its very best, Christianity is all about giving: God giving his son, his son giving himself, his followers gi...

A Third View of Jesus’ Body at the Resurrection

This will be my final post on the early Christian understandings of the nature of Jesus’ resurrected body. I have tried to show that Paul believed that Jesus’ actual body came out of the tomb, but as a spiritual, immortal body – completely transformed; other Christians, including groups of Gnostics, maintained that Jesus’ spirit lived on even though his body decomposed and ceased to exist (like all other bodies) In this final post I deal with another extreme in the opposite direction, one fou...

A Third View of Jesus’ Body at the Resurrection (For members)

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A Gnostic View of Jesus’ Resurrection

Yesterday, in response to a question, I discussed Paul’s view of the resurrection of Jesus. In response to several questions I was asked, let me say emphatically that YES, in my view Paul believed that Jesus corpse itself was transformed into a spiritual body. If asked, he would have said that the grave was empty. That’s how I read 1 Corinthians 15. The body that comes out of the tomb is the same body that went into the tomb, but it is a transformed (not a different) body, made immortal. (And...

A Gnostic View of Jesus’ Resurrection (For members)

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