Bart D. Ehrman's Blog, page 6

1 John: Who Wrote It, When, and Why?

In my previous post I provided a summary of the main themes and emphases of 1 John; now I can turn to the question of Who, Why, and When. They question of “who wrote it” has long been discussed, and almost always in relationship to the Gospel of John.  Neither book mentions the name John; [...]

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1 John in a Nutshell

  I move now in this “NT in a Nutshell” series to provide an overview of the epistle of 1 John, one of the General or Catholic Epistles.  This short, five-chapter book is normally called a “letter” even though it does not have the standard features of an ancient piece of correspondence. Normally (not just [...]

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My First Scholarly Encounter with the Canon of the New Testament

So: I've started to work on my next book (or books, depending on how things go), on how we got the canon of the New Testament.  Why these 27 books?  Why not others?  Who decided?  When?  On what grounds?  etc. I started thinking about this issue already as an 18-year-old in Bible college, but at [...]

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Why Wasn’t Peter’s Apocalypse Included in the New Testament?

As I indicated in my previous post, I’m planning to write a book (after the one on charity in early Christianity) explaining how we got the canon of the New Testament.  Who choose the books?  On what grounds?  And when? In this post I thought I'd show the kind of think I'll be interested in, [...]

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My Next Book: Creating the Bible — How We Got the Canon of the New Testament

Now that my book Love Thy Stranger is done, in press, being prepared for publication (March 24!  You can preorder it with a price guarantee from Amazon already), and, as far as I am concerned with, over and done with, I have moved on to the next project, or projects.  I THINK it will be two -- [...]

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Paul’s Letters to the Philippians and to Philemon, “At a Glance” and with Questions for Reflection

I have been providing bullet-point summaries of the books of the New Testament, based on my fuller "nutshell summaries,"  along with some questions to think about in reflecting on the books.  With this post I will complete the undisputed Pauline epistles, that is, the seven letters that by virtual consensus are considered to be authentically [...]

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Scheduled Blog Maintenance – Monday Sept. 8th

If you've been following along with the blog the last few years, you've probably heard various rumblings about a new blog platform. You might have even have periodically wondered, "Is that project still happening? What's the latest?"  We're excited to let you know that the first phase of the new platform we've been working on [...]

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Questions: Did Paul state that Jesus was put in a tomb? Is Jesus like Pagan gods? Is the hope for a messiah like the belief in Santa?

Here some more of the excellent questions I have received from readers, and my responses.   QUESTION: Dale Allison has said that the word for buried in 1 Corinthians 15 means to be buried in a mass grave, tomb or stone cave but it does not mean in a shallow grave where bird eat the [...]

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1 Thessalonians at a Glance, and Questions for Reflection

I now provide a bullet point list that summarizes "at a glance" Paul's very first surviving letter (and therefore the earliest Christian writing of any kind that we have!), along with some questions to reflect on based on this very interesting text.  It's a short but fascinating letter; if you don't remember it very well, [...]

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Paul’s Letter to the Galatians “At a Glance” and Questions for Reflection

I see that I have fallen behind in this series on the “New Testament in a Nutshell” in my posts that provide a bullet-point overview of each book (“at a glance”) and the kinds of questions I ask my students to reflect on after they have studied the text.  Catch-up time!  Here I deal with [...]

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