Bart D. Ehrman's Blog, page 4

Four Intriguing Topics in the Study of the Historical Jesus

The previous two posts explained why scholars have such difficulty using the Gospels as historical sources, as explained by early Christianity scholar Marko Marina (see more about him here: https://tragoviproslosti.eu/about-me/).  This primer was mean to set the stage for the eight lectures given by a range of internationally known historical Jesus scholars at our New Insights [...]

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Seventy Years on This Planet and One Fundraiser: You’re Invited

Today I'm celebrating one of those birthdays that ends in a zero. Yes, October 5th marks my 70th spin around the sun.  Ouch.  Or... Yay! For reasons that escape me, people keep insisting that reaching such an age is an accomplishment. Personally, I think of it more as an accident, but an accident worth marking [...]

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Does Jude Attack Pauline Christians?

In my previous two posts I’ve tried to show why the short letter of Jude appears to be forged in the name of Jesus’s own brother Jude.  That naturally leads to the question of why someone would do that – not just in general (why write a forgery!):  there were lots of early Christian forgeries, [...]

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October 2025 Gold Q&A Announcement

It's that time again, Gold & Platinum Members! Our October Gold Q&A is scheduled for Saturday October 25th at 3pm Eastern. You know the drill. Submit your burning questions for Bart to ehrmanblog@gmail.com by the end of the day Thursday October 23rd. Jen will compile them and hand them off to Bart, who will do his [...]

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Unpacking 1 Enoch, the Apocryphal Writing Quoted by Jude

In my previous post I bean to describe the Jewish apocryphal book 1 Enoch, the only apocryphon clearly quoted in the New Testament, and apparently quoted as an authoritative Scripture (Jude 14-15).  Here I pick up where I left off, describing what the opening section of the book, the “Book of the Watchers” is all [...]

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1 Enoch: The Scripture Quoted by Jude

In my posts on Jude (In a Nutshell) I pointed out that the book quotes the apocryyphal Jewish writing known as 1 Enoch.  Many of you will not be intimately familiar with this intriguing book, so I thought I should spend a couple of posts explaining what it is. I have taken the following from [...]

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Jude as Pseudepigraphic (i.e., forged)

I concluded my previous post by indicating that a number of Christian readers/leaders in the ancient world considered Jude not to be authentic – that is, that it was a forgery written in the name of Jesus’s brother by someone else.  Here I continue the discussion, again taken from my study, Forgery and Counterforgery (Oxford [...]

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Book of Jude: Who Wrote it? When? And Why? (part 1)

In my previous post I explained the major themes and emphases of the letter of Jude, including some of its most intriguing and even unexpected features (e.g., quoting apocryphal tales/texts as seemingly authoritative scripture).  In this post and the next I will deal with the thorny questions of who actually wrote it, when, and why. [...]

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Heaven, the Hedonic Treadmill, and Homer (Simpson) Platinum Post by Douglas Wadeson MD

I'm happy to post this guest contribution from Platinum member Doug Wadeson. He raises a question most of us probably haven’t thought much about: if eternity is endless bliss, would we actually enjoy it? Or would it get… boring? --------------------------------------------------- My favorite TV series is the old Twilight Zone by Rod Serling.  There is an [...]

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The Letter of Jude in a Nutshell

We come now in this “New Testament in a Nutshell” series to the penultimate book of the canon, the short letter of Jude.  I begin by giving a one-sentence ,fifty-word summary of the book, before, in this post, explaining more fully its themes and emphases.  The letter of Jude warns its unnamed [...]

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