Bart D. Ehrman's Blog, page 48

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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Knowing Paul’s Views of Women…

I recently received this important question from a reader that is closely related to the current thread about whether we have the "original" text of the books of the New Testament. QUESTION: The question was specifically about about women's roles in the church based on 1 Corinthians 14:34-35. “Women should be silent in the churches. [...]

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When Does Life Begin? The Status of the Unborn in the Biblical Tradition.

I'm pleased to announce that I will be doing a new two-lecture course on a rather timely topic, When Does Life Begin: The Status of the Unborn in the Biblical Tradition.  The course is not connected with the Blog per se, except insofar as I'm doing it and many of you might be interested.   For more information [...]

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A Major Argument That We Can Be Sure We Have the Original Text

There is one particularly interesting argument sometimes used by those who believe we can know with good certainty what the original text of the New Testament books said.  This is the argument called the “tenacity of the tradition.”  The argument is prefaced on the very interesting phenomenon that whenever papyri manuscripts are discovered – say [...]

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Dubious Arguments That We CAN Get to the “Original Text”

When I have public debates with scholars over whether we can know the original text of the New Testament or not, I stake out the claim that we cannot, and they stake out the claim that we probably can.  Part of my argument is always the one I started to outline in the previous post.  [...]

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