Bart D. Ehrman's Blog, page 72

About Those Ebionites and Their Peculiar Gospel

There are other interesting features of the Gospel of the Ebionites, known from the quotations of Epiphanius, the fourth-century heresiologist (= heresy-hunter). We wish we had the whole Gospel. We have only these eight fragments that Epiphanius quotes. We wish we knew who actually used the Gospel. We wish we knew how long it [...]

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Paul, the Apostate: a Platinum Post by Manuel Fiadeiro

I'm pleased to present this Platinum Members guestpost by your fellow platinum member Manuel Fiadeiro, a retelling of the conversion and mission of the apostle Paul, with intriguing possibilities.  What do you make of it?  Let Manuel and the rest of us know! And remember that you too can publish a Platinum post to [...]

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Locusts or Pancakes? The Dietary Preferences of John the Baptist.

Among the eight quotations of the Gospel of the Ebionites in the writings of Epiphanius, none is more interesting that the one in which he describes John the Baptist. Its humorous side may not be evident at first glance. Here is what he says could be found in the Gospel: And so John was [...]

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Contradictions? What Contradictions? Harmonizing the Gospels.

In my previous post I indicated that one of the quotations of the Gospel of the Ebionites, as preserved in the writings of Epiphanius, appears to represent some kind of harmonization of the Gospels, an attempt to explain how the three different versions of what the voice from heaven says at Jesus’ baptism can *all* [...]

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A Conference on the Gospels for Non-Scholars!

I'm getting very excited about the upcoming remote conference I'll be hosting next week, Sept. 23-24.  I've mentioned it before on the blog, and here I thought I could give you a better taste of what it will involve. It is called "New Insights into the New Testament" and will entail ten 50-minute lectures by [...]

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The Pauline Style and a Discussion About Paul’s Motivation. A Platinum Post From Omar Robb

Here are some reflections on the homiletic style Paul uses in his letters, with some much broader implications for understanding Paul's situation and teaching by Platinum Post member Omar Robb.  Feel free to comment and provide feedback! ****************************** I need to be upfront and clearly say that this article is just a rough set of [...]

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The Apocryphal Gospels By and For Jewish Christians

Among the non-canonical (apocryphal) Gospels are three that are usually grouped together and called “Jewish-Christian Gospels.” These are very tricky texts to deal with. We don’t have any manuscripts of them – even small fragments. They come to us, instead, in isolated quotations of church fathers such as Origen, Didymus the Blind, Jerome, and Epiphanius. [...]

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Want to Study the Early Christian Apocrypha?

There are some topics that I deal with on the blog that give me a knot in the stomach just to broach -- including the question of whether Jesus was really buried on the afternoon of his death (my recent long thread).  The issues are so convoluted and so many people disagree that I wonder, [...]

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Jesus, Sun Myung Moon, and Me: a Platinum Post from William Poe

  ******************************* A bit of introduction may be in order. I grew up in a conservative Southern Baptist church. My family wasn’t especially religious, but we often attended Sunday sermons and not least due to peer pressure, I was baptized when I was nine years old. As a teen, and without much resistance from my [...]

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A Hugely Memorable Moment: When I Saw Codex Sinaiticus

In my last post I began to relate an anecdote about a traveling adventure I had several years ago, when giving lectures for a UNC trip to Egypt and Jordan with a stop at the famed St. Catherine’s monastery in the southern part of the Sinai peninsula, the place where Tischendorf had discovered the biblical [...]

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