Bart D. Ehrman's Blog, page 5

Cleopatra, Virgin Births, and Professional Scribes: More about antiquity…

Here are yet three more excellent questions I have received from blog readers, all of them both interesting and important. QUESTION: I recently came across a rather bold and curious linguistic claim regarding the term ‘Paraclete’ within the Gospel of John, and I was hoping to ask your opinion of it. To be [...]

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Questions on Forgeries, Historical Errors, and Alterations of Texts!

I'm catching up on posting some of the very interesting questions I've received from blog readers.  This will take a couple of posts.  Here are three excellent ones, all going to the heart of what it means to engage in a historical/critical assessment of the New Testament.   QUESTION: Hey Bart, I have a question [...]

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A New Way to Support the Blog: Become a Blog Steward

When I started the blog back in 2012, I had two main goals. The first was to take the historical study of the New Testament and early Christianity out of the academy and make it available to anyone who wanted to learn. The second was to do some good with it. From the very beginning, [...]

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Some Reflections on Our (My) Finitude and the Fear of Death

I have come up with a new way of thinking about our finitude, about the fact that we all die and (in my view) that’s the end of the story.  At least I think it’s a new way.  I don’t recall ever hearing or reading it.  If it is a common view, or a least [...]

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The DeuteroPauline Epistles “At a Glance,” With Questions for Reflection

In this post I give an executive summary (“At a Glance”) of the Deutero-Pauline letters (2 Thessalonians, Ephesians, and Colossiansand then provide some questions for deeper reflection on these books that claim to be written by Paul but are widely considered by critical scholars to be penned by later followers claiming to be him   [...]

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1, 2, and 3 John: For Further Reading

Now that I have discussed the themes, emphases, authors and occasions of the “Johannine epistles” (1, 2, and 3 John) I can provide some suggestions for further reading.  These are all important works written by scholars for non-scholars.  I have given brief annotations for each book to give you a sense of what it’s about [...]

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2 John and 3 John in a Single Nutshell

In this post I continue my summaries of the books of the New Testament “In a Nutshell” by turning to the letters of 2 and 3 John.  Because these are so brief, I will deal with them together in a single post, explaining their themes and emphases and exploring the question of who wrote them, [...]

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The Weird Textual Variant of 1 John 4:3: False Teachers Who “Loose” Jesus?

This post will be about a couple of intriguing textual variants in our manuscripts of the New Testament, including the use of a four-letter word (literally) in 1 John.  To set the stage, let me remind you that in my previous post I discussed an early Christian understanding of Christ that I called “separationist,” because [...]

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Was Jesus Christ Two Beings, One Human (Jesus) and One Divine (Christ)?

Just to show how strange and, uh, detailed scholarship can be even in New Testament studies, I want to conclude this small thread on the five-chapter book of 1 John by discussing a textual variant in its text that I was obsessed with for years.  It involves how different manuscripts word just one verse (1 [...]

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Was Jesus Christ Two Beings, one human (Jesus) and one divine (Christ)?

Just to show how strange and, uh, detailed scholarship can be even in New Testament studies, I want to conclude this small thread on the five-chapter book of 1 John by discussing a textual variant in its text that I was obsessed with for years.  It involves how different manuscripts word just one verse (1 [...]

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