Bart D. Ehrman's Blog, page 8

Paul’s Vision of Heaven and Hell

I now turn to another non-canonical text connected with Paul, one of the most famous throughout the Middle Ages, an account of his journey to observe the fate of souls in the afterlife, both the glories of the saints in heaven and the torments of the sinners in hell.   This tale is not simply meant [...]

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Chastity Within Marriage? Paul Taught THAT?

In my previous post I summarized the legendary account of Paul and his most famous female disciple Thecla, and ended by quoting the “gospel message” that he preaches in the tale.  It’s not at all what you would expect.  He says no word about believing in Christ’s death and resurrection.  It is all about remaining [...]

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Paul and His Most Famous Woman Disciple

I have now finished my summaries and discussions of each of the thirteen Pauline letters, "In a Nutshell."  In this long thread we have now covered 18 of the New Testament's 27 books, which, by my math, means we are two-thirds of the way through this thread.  Nine more gems to go. I'd like to [...]

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Should We Keep “Slaves” in the New Testament?

I’ve been talking about Paul’s view of slavery, in light of the book of Philemon; this seems to be a good time to talk about a very big issue connected with translating the New Testament from Greek into English.  It may seem fairly straightforward, but in fact it is incredibly thorny:  what English word is [...]

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Paul’s Letter to Philemon: For Further Reading

Here is a list of readings on Philemon, all of which are relevant to all the undisputed Pauline epistles, with a couple of commentaries specifically on this significant, short letter.  One benefit of serious commentaries is that they always begin by discussing major critical issues in understanding a book: authorship, date, historical context, major themes, [...]

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Reader Survey Webinar Registration

As part of our ongoing effort to improve the Ehrman Blog (including a major redesign to enhance the site and user experience) we recently invited members to participate in a comprehensive reader survey. If you completed the survey, we have a special thank-you just for you: You’re invited to attend a live webinar with Bart [...]

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Philemon and the Morality of Slavery

Here are a few more comments about the short letter of Paul to Philemon, whose major themes and emphases I discussed yesterday.   It may indeed seem a rather perifpheral letter – it’s a private letter about a slave returning to his master, not about Paul’s great theological views or highly informative discussions of his life.  [...]

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The Letter to Philemon in a Nutshell

I come now to the final Pauline letter of the New Testament, Philemon.  If you recall, Paul’s letters are ordered by length; this is by far the shortest, a real one-pager.  Given it’s brevity, I’ll be dealing with its major themes and emphases and the questions of Who, When and Why in just this one [...]

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The Evolution of Jewish Monotheism–Platinum Post By Daniel Kohanski

Every time we receive four guest contributions from our Platinum members (available to Platinum members only), we open up the floor for Platinum members to vote on one to share with the entire blog community. It’s our way of spotlighting the thoughtful, high-quality work being done by members and inviting wider discussion. We recently caught [...]

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Another Puzzling Figure in the Hebrew Bible: Woman Wisdom?

Here is another tidbit from the Hebrew Bible section of first edition of my textbook that covered Genesis to Revelation, book-by-book, now being edited for a third edition with Joel Baden. ****************************** Box 1.2: Woman Wisdom as God’s Consort? We have seen that in ancient Israel Yahweh was sometimes thought to have a [...]

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