Bart D. Ehrman's Blog, page 77

A Proposition That the First Greek Converts to Jesus Were a Few Ascetic Pythagorean Philosophers. A Platinum Post From Omar Robb

Another deep dive into an interesting question with a new suggestion, with Platinum member Omar Robb! ****************************** In this article we will propose a solution to the following puzzle: How did Jesus teaching pass and flourish from its local limited domain (the Jewish community in Palestine) to a foreign domain (the Greek-Roman world) in less [...]

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Does It Even Matter If Jesus Was Given a Proper Burial?

Now that I have devoted a few posts to presenting my argument for why I think Jesus was probably not given a decent burial – the posts were portions of a chapter lifted from How Jesus Became God (HarperOne, 2014)– I am in a position to begin to respond to the counter-arguments of Craig Evans, [...]

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More Reasons for Thinking Jesus was Not Given a Decent Burial

  So far in this thread I have been laying out the argument found in my book How Jesus Became God of why I do not think Jesus was given a decent burial by Joseph of Arimathea on the day he was crucified.  This will be the last post on the question. After this the fun [...]

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Did Romans Allow Decent Burials for Crucified Criminals?

  In considering whether Jesus was buried on the day of his death, does it matter what Roman typical practices were?  Or should these just be overlooked, not taken into consideration? In addition to the rather general considerations I have given in my previous post for calling into question the idea that Jesus received a [...]

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Literary Problems with the Gospel Accounts of Jesus’ Burial

Here is a section from my book How Jesus Became God  (HarperOne, 2014) that deals with the question of whether Jesus was actually given a decent burial by Joseph of Arimathea.  At this point of my discussion I am not looking into the question of whether it is plausible that Jesus would be buried on [...]

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Reminder: Why I’m Not a Christian — tomorrow!

In case you missed this -- I'll be doing a FREE four-lecture course tomorrow (with long Q&A) on "Why I Am Not A Christian."  In it I will talk about my faith journey not for the sake of autobiography per se, but to explain one story of a person who came no longer to believe [...]

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Back to Whether Jesus Was Really Given a Decent Burial

Was Jesus actually given a decent burial the afternoon he was crucified?  Almost every Christian in the known universe, and almost all New Testament scholars, don't ask the question and if they do they don't ask it seriously:  of *course* he was.  Just read the Gospels!  Why wouldn't he be? For years now I've taken [...]

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Is the USA the Antichrist of the Book of Revelation? Slavic Views of the Apocalypse. Guest Post by Mikhail Abakumov

A few months ago I was invited to do a remote interview with a podcaster from Ukraine, Mikhail Abakumov, who has emigrated to Poland because of the war.  Mikhail is a Christian scholar, working with Ukranian refugees, and writing a dissertation on the famous German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, famous for being involved with, and eventually [...]

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Male Superiority in Antiquity

Why did ancient Greeks and Romans think that "men" were inherently superior to "women"?  Many people (and entire cultures) think that still today, of course, but for now I ain't goin' there.  I'm interested in understanding this understanding in the ancient world out of which Christianity grew, on the assumption that modern ideas have been [...]

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More on Love: Why Were Greek Men Especially Attracted to Prepubescent Boys?

What is it with Greek pederasty?  How could this be a thing, the widely accepted practice in classical Athens (at least) of an adult man taking an adolescent boy under his wing and into his bed, providing an education into the culture, social world, and politics of the city in exchange for sexual favors? I’ve [...]

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