Bart D. Ehrman's Blog, page 70

Josephus’ One Statement About the Burial of Crucified Victims in Judea

We come now, at last, to the best argument in Craig Evans’ arsenal, in his attack on the views of Jesus’ burial that I set forth in in How Jesus Became God.   Tomorrow I will deal with the second best – an argument from archaeology.   Craig makes a somewhat bigger deal of the second [...]

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Thoughts on Cosmology, a Platinum Post From Charles Hawkins

Like many of you, I'm fascinated by how ancient people understood the world / universe -- the "cosmos" -- and by what modern cosmologist who actually do the science say about it.  Only rarely can someone speak confidently about both topics, wildly different as they are.  So I'm pleased to publish this Platinum guest post [...]

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Bogus Arguments for Disbelief

I can completely understand why some people choose not to believe in the Christian tradition, since I too am not a Christian.  But I find it a bit dismaying when people reject aspects of the Christian tradition for (literally) illogical reasons.  Or even worse, attack it for illogical reasons.  This often involves drawing unfounded religious [...]

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How Relevant is Josephus for Knowing What Happened to the Body of Jesus?

In my previous post I began to deal with the first of two arguments that Craig Evans provides from Josephus.  Craig wants to argue that Josephus, a first-century Jewish authority, explicitly indicates that Romans allowed Jews to provide decent burials for their dead.   In this first argument Craig provides a concatenation of passages from Josephus [...]

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Did Jews Always Bury Their Dead on the Day of their Death? Was Jesus Buried Then?

I have not covered all of the points that Craig Evans makes in his essay “Getting the Burial Traditions and Evidences Right,” which is his response to the position I stake out in How Jesus Became God.  My view is that Jesus probably was not given a decent burial on the day of his death [...]

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August 2023 Gold Q&A (video)

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Premarital Sex in The Song of Songs: A Platinum Post by Dan Kohanski

       The Bible has numerous passages that would be shocking to many readers if they read them without pious assumptions.  Of none is that more true than the Song of Songs (sometimes called the Song of Solomon).   And so I welcome this guest post by Platinum members Dan Kohanski, who takes on this [...]

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The Evidence of Josephus for the Burial of Jesus

I have devoted a large number of posts to going carefully through the main arguments that Craig Evans makes in his critique of the position I take in How Jesus Became God with respect to the burial tradition, in his essay, “Getting the Burial Traditions and Evidences Right”  (in How God Became Jesus; check it [...]

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Why Do Some (Many?) Scholars Not Treat the Bible Like Other Ancient Sources?

As I was thinking today about the need to be consistently critical with all of our sources – not just the ones we want to be critical of (this was the topic of yesterday’s post, with an ultimate view of what I want to say about Josephus as a possible witness to the practice of [...]

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How To Be a Consistently Critical Historian, In the Good Sense

I know that by now I’m supposed to  be citing Craig Evans’s best arguments that Jesus was probably given a decent  burial on the day of his crucifixion by Joseph of Arimathea, rather than being left hanging on the cross for a few days in accordance with standard Roman practice.  But I’ve realized that before [...]

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