Bart D. Ehrman's Blog, page 44

Do We Have the Original Text of Philippians?

  I have been discussing whether we have the "original" text of Paul's letters, and have argued that 2 Corinthians in fact is probably two and maybe (my view) as many as five letters spliced together.  It's not the only letter of Paul's that we may not have an "original" version of (assuming that the [...]

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John the Baptist: The Most Influential Religious Innovator in History by James McGrath (Part 3)

Now we have the final installment of James McGrath's thread of posts on the importance of John the Baptist, which, as he argues, most people have overlooked.  What do you think?  Comment and ask away! ****************************** John the Baptist was probably the most significant religious innovator in the history of religion. We’ve failed to see [...]

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REMINDER: My Webinar — When Does Life Begin? The Status of the Unborn in the Biblical Tradition

In case you missed it last time, here's my announcement of the course I'll be doing on this coming Sunday.  It's a difficult, very complicated, and often incredibly important topic.  I hope you can come! ************************ I'm pleased to announce that I will be doing a new two-lecture course on a rather timely topic, When [...]

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John the Baptist: The Most Influential Religious Innovator in History by James McGrath (Part 2)

Is John the Baptist THE most significant religious innovator in religion, ever?  Here James McGrath (  James F. McGrath - Wikipedia  ) continues with the second of his three controversial posts on John the Baptist: the first few sentence remind you of the basic claim and the books in which he develops it -- the [...]

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John the Baptist: The Most Influential Religious Innovator in History by James McGrath (Part 1)

I am pleased to publish a short series of posts on John the Baptist by James McGrath,  Clarence L. Goodwin Chair in New Testament Language and Literature at Butler University (see James F. McGrath - Wikipedia) based on his TWO new books (one coming out next month, June 2024; the other in October).    The [...]

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Is Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians Actually FIVE Letters?

In my previous post I tried to show why most critical scholars think that the letter of 2 Corinthians is actually two different letters that have been spliced together.   When I was back in graduate school, I learned – to my surprise – that there were scholars who thought that in fact 2 Corinthians was [...]

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Is Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians Actually TWO Letters?

How many of the early Christian writings consist of scissors-and-paste jobs, where later editors cut up earlier writings and stitched them together into one continuous work, so that what we have now are not the originals but only the final edited version?  Are there books like that, for example, in the New Testament?  In my [...]

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Three Early Christian Writings Spliced Together Into One: The Didache

Is it possible that some of the writings of the New Testament are cut-and-paste jobs, where several writings have been combined together, instead of one writing done by one author at one time?  I decided to get to this question by referring to another early Christian writing, outside the New Testament, for which this is [...]

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An Important Early Christian Writing

  I have been doing a thread in response to a reader who asked how we know we have the originals of the books of the Bible.  On one hand, the question involves how we know the words the authors originally wrote.  I've been dealing with that question over a number of posts.  But the [...]

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The Silencing of Women: 1 Cor. 14:34-35 as an Interpolation

In my previous post I began to address the question of whether we have the original text of 1 Cor. 14:34-35, where Paul tells women that they must be silent in the churches. I first had to show that the similar passage of 1 Tim. 10-15 is not by Paul, because 1 Timothy itself was [...]

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