Bart D. Ehrman's Blog, page 78

Jesus’ Trial Before Pilate: What Can We Actually Know?

In this post I shift from a general overview of what we can know about Jesus’ last days/hours to a specific instance.  What can we actually know about his trial before Pontius Pilate, that led to his crucifixion?    Do we know the details?  Can we get the gist?   Is there *anything* that is (relatively) certain?   [...]

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The Radical Teachings of Jesus–And Why No One Follows Them

This is the title I’d like for my next book.  Of course, I may change my mind (it happens all the time) and of greater moment, what I propose to my publisher as a title book often ends up having little effect or influence on the actual title.  Publishers have the final say on that, [...]

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The Events Leading up to the Death of Jesus: What Can We Know and Not Know?

Now I’d like the rubber to meet the road.  If we think we can know a good bit of the gist of Jesus’ life, what can we say with relative certainly about how it ended?  What do scholars who look at all the evidence basically agree on?  And what (and how much!) is basically up [...]

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If We Can Know the “Gist” of What Jesus Said and Did … What’s the Gist?

I’m going to be discussing soon some of the things that appear to be “misremembered” about Jesus in our early sources, but first it’s important to emphasize some of the hugely critical positive things about memory – like, that most of the time we get it basically right.  Depending, of course, on what “basically” means! [...]

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Were Jesus’ Most Amazing Deeds the Ones Most Likely to be Remembered?

Here I continue thinking about memory in relation to Jesus by dealing with an obvious objection to the idea that Jesus' followers, and those who heard the stories about him, were prone to misremember what they saw and heard -- these were SPECTACULAR events.  Aren't spectacular events and stories far more likely to be remembered [...]

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Vote for Your Favorite Platinum Post

  Hey Platinum Members, Time to vote on your favorite platinum guest post from relatively recent times.  Here are four to choose from, all of them interesting and important!  Pick one and name your preference, not as a comment here but by letting Diane know at ehrmanblog@gmail.com   She'll tally the votes and then we'll annouce [...]

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Eyewitness Testimony: The Importance of Actual Expertise

It is flat-out amazing to me how many New Testament scholars talk about the importance of eyewitness testimony to the life of Jesus without having read a single piece of scholarship on what experts know about eyewitness testimony.  Some (well-known) scholars in recent years have written entire books on the topic, basing their views on [...]

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Eyewitnesses and Guaranteed Accuracy

In my book Jesus Before the Gospels, I discuss how “memories” of a famous person based on eyewitness testimony can be easily distorted.  Among other examples I use, is a famous miracle-working holy-person from outside the Christian tradition that is in many ways strikingly similar to the situation with Jesus (there are obviously big differences [...]

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“You Have Heard His Blasphemy!” But Did They? A Platinum post by Daniel Kohanski

Today we have a well-researched Platinum post by Dan Kohanski. He makes a good case! ****************************** “You Have Heard His Blasphemy!” Said the High Priest—But Did They? The trial of Jesus as described in the gospel of Mark, and particularly the part where the high priest charges Jesus with blasphemy, is one of the most [...]

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Being Realistic about How Stories about Jesus Spread before the Gospels

In my previous post I showed how Christian missionaries – the vast majority of them not companions of Jesus or eyewitnesses to his life – were telling stories about Jesus as they moved around in the empire spreading the gospel in the early decades, before the Gospels were written (think Paul and his missionary companions, [...]

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