Bart D. Ehrman's Blog, page 84

My New Online Course on Paul and Jesus!

In case you haven't heard, I will be doing a live, eight-lecture online course comparing the theology of Paul and Jesus on May 27-28.  The course is not connected with the blog -- it is part of my separate venture for a series I'm publishing called How Scholars Read the Bible.  But I mention here [...]

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Didn’t the Disciples Memorize Jesus’ Teachings and Accounts of His Life?

I've been talking about how scholars began to realize in the early 20th century that the stories of Jesus in the Gospels were based on oral traditions that the Gospel writers inherited decades earlier.  But is that really a problem?  Here's how I discuss the issue in my book Jesus Before the Gospels (HarperOne, 2016). ****************************** [...]

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Was Jesus Literate or Illiterate? A Platinum Post by Omar Abur-Robb

For Platinum members, from Platinum member Omar Abur-Robb: ****************************** Was Jesus literate or Illiterate omr-mhmd.yolasite.com   Scholars are in difference regarding whether Jesus was literate or not, and I would like to explore this subject. Most of the people who lives in Galilee at the time of Jesus were peasants, and most of the peasants [...]

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Stories of Jesus Passed on By Word of Mouth. When Scholars First Took Oral Traditions Seriously.

I'm discussing how scholars came to realize that Mark our earliest Gospel is not simply a nuts-and-bolts, unembellished, accurate report of what Jesus said and did.  This kind of scholarship reached a kind of climax about a century ago with a group of scholars called "form critics."  To make sense of what they said and [...]

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Does Mark Present the Bare-Bones Facts about Jesus’ Life?

In my previous post I showed how scholars in the 19th century came to think that our shortest and evidently-least-embelished Gospel Mark gave the accurate account of Jesus ' life, so that any reconstruction of what Jesus really said and did simply could simply assume that Mark provides the essential information. But is that right?  [...]

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Was Levi of Alphaeus the “the Beloved Disciple”? Platinum Post by Gregory Hartzler-Miller, MATS

  ****************************** Was Levi of Alphaeus the "the Beloved Disciple"? A Redaction Critical Approach   Since the discovery of the Gospel of Peter, scholars have speculated about the missing words after the mention of "Levi of Alphaeus" in the final sentence, which breaks off. The sentence reads, "But I, Simon Peter, and my brother Andrew, [...]

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How Can We Get Behind “False Memories” of Jesus to the Historical Facts?

I'm discussing how in both the ancient and modern worlds people have constructed "false memories" of who Jesus really was.  In this post I give a brief explanation of how scholars became increasingly aware of the problem and, for a time, thought they had found a solution:  Mark's Gospel is the unembellished version and so [...]

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Did Early Christians “Invent” Memories of Jesus?

I've been talking about how we remember things -- or misremember things, or make up memories of things -- as a way of getting to the question of how, in our heads, we think about what Jesus said and did.  This is all part of my larger project that came incarnated (inletterated?) in my book Jesus [...]

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Jesus’ Resurrection: A Challenging Hypothetical. Guest Post by Ryan Fleming

And now *here* is an interesting way to think about whether someone was raised from the dead!  This is a Platinum Guest Post by Ryan Fleming.  It is begging for responses.  What do you think? ****************************** A short story: Suppose you are a French-resistance fighter in Nazi-occupied Paris during World War II. One of your [...]

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The Father and the Son. A Platinum Post by Omar Abur-Robb

A Platinum post for fellow Platinum members from Omar Abur-Robb:   ****************************** The Father and the Son omr-mhmd.yolasite.com   When and how the people of the Christian faith started to refer to God as “The Father”? Jews today refer to God as Adonai, Hashem, or Elohim. Karaite Jews do refer to God as Yahweh, but [...]

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