Bart D. Ehrman's Blog, page 65

What Is Actually In the Nag Hammadi Library?

For near fifty years now the "books that did not make it into the New Testament" have been a source of fascination, not just for scholars but for regular ol' folk intrigued by the idea that there may have been alternative forms of Christianity, a wide range of seemingly bizarre beliefs and practices out there [...]

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Reminder: Interesting Lecture on Thursday Oct. 19: Creation Stories not in Genesis!

Hey Blog Folk, Quick reminder of an interesting lecture tomorrow evening (Thursday Oct. 18); it's free even though we're hoping for donations (not connected with the blog).  Here's the original annoucement in case you missed, misplaced, misconceived, or misconstrued it: ********************************* Are you interested in the Creation account in Genesis 1?  Did you know there [...]

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Our Most Important Discovery of Ancient Christian Writings: The Nag Hammadi Library

The most significant discovery of Christian manuscripts (ever) was the Nag Hammadi Library, popularly (and a bit inaccurately) known as "the Gnostic Gospels." One of the intriguing features of the discovery is that no one is quite sure how it happened.  When I was in graduate school, everyone heard a standard tale that we then [...]

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Another Mythicist View of Jesus’ Brothers

In my previous post I pointed out that mythicists have a real problem on their hands when it comes to insisting that Jesus didn’t exist (well, they actually have a *boatload* of problems; but this is one of them): Paul actually knew, personally, Jesus’ own brother, James. It’s hard to say that Jesus never lived [...]

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New Policy on Platinum Guest Posts

Dear Platinum Members, We have had a slew of terrifically interesting Platinum Member guest posts over the past year, and such a slew that we (we being me and my blog advisory committee) have decided we need to limit the quantity of the submissions. Keep on sending ‘em in!  BUT, we would like to limit [...]

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What the Jesus “Mythicists” Say About the Brothers of Jesus

Ten years ago on the blog when I was discussing the Proto-Gospel of James (the current subthread within a thread), I received an intriguing question about this issue, addressed in the previous post, about the brothers of Jesus and how "mythicists" -- those who claim there never was a historical Jesus whatsoever but that he [...]

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Were Jesus’ Brothers His … Brothers? The Proto-Gospel of James

In the Gospels conference a few weeks ago (New Insights Into the New Testament; see New Insights into the New Testament: A Biblical Conference for Non-Scholars (bartehrman.com), Candida Moss gave a fascinating presentation on (the historical) Jesus' actual family. That is a major issue in the non-canonical Gospel I have been discussing just now in [...]

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Misquoting Jesus Podcast: Special One-Year Anniversary Edition

As some of you know, I do a weekly podcast (unrelated to the blog) called "Misquoting Jesus."   My co-host is Megan Lewis, a terrific interlocutor who is an expert on ancient history (she's actually an Assyriologist!  And trained in classics), who asks terrific questions.  Basically, she interviews me on a different topic each week, the [...]

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When a Gospel Meets the Twilight Zone: As Time Stands Still in the Proto-Gospel of James

In my previous post I mentioned one of the most significant passages of the Proto-Gospel, where the midwife Salome doubts that a virgin had given birth (note: she does not doubt whether a virgin could have *conceived* [although no doubt she *would* have doubted it!]; what she doubts is that a woman could give *birth* [...]

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The Gospel Before the Gospel: The Proto-Gospel of James

In this thread I've been talking about some of the more famous Gospels that are not in the New Testament. I move now to one that I've talked about on the blog before, but it's been a few years so it's worth talking about again. It is arguably the most influential Gospel outside the [...]

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