Bart D. Ehrman's Blog, page 97

Are You Willing To Give a Holiday Gift Membership To Someone Who Needs It??

We are five days from Christmas and twelve days from the New Year.  At about this time for nearly every December of the blog's existence I have opened up a holiday giving option that can help out people who really want to be on the blog but cannot afford the membership fees. In most years [...]

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Did Jesus Appear to 500 People After His Resurrection?

What do we make of Paul's claim that 500 people at one time saw Jesus after the resurrection (in 1 Corinthians 15:3-5)?   I get this question every now and then -- maybe five or six times just this year.  These days, among other things, I point 0ut something I hadn't thought about in most of [...]

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Did Christ Save *Everyone* When He Descended to Hades?

In my previous post I started to discuss the famous doctrine of the “Harrowing of Hell,” where Christ is said to have descended to Hades after his death (since he was a human, after all, and when humans die, they go to Hades.  Part of the reason for the doctrine, then, is that if he [...]

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Did Jesus Descend to Hell After He Died?

Someone on the blog recently asked me about the idea that after Jesus’ death, and before his resurrection, he “descended into hell.”  This is an affirmation found in the Apostle’s Creed, and so continues to be recited by millions of Christians still today.  But what does it mean? Throughout the history of the church it [...]

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What Would the Apostle Paul Think of The Trinity? Platinum Guest Post by Joel Scheller

Now here's an intriguing question about early Christianity, posed and answered by Platinum Blog member Joel Scheller in a guest post for all you other Platinums.   One way to put the question is this: Would the apostle-Paul have been considered an arch-heretic in the fourth century?  A good case can be made!  Read on. And [...]

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The Mind-Body Problem As My Personal Dilemma. What Do YOU Think?

Is there an I in me? For several years now, I have been increasingly fascinated by the brain as an organ, and by consciousness as a phenomenon.  These are not topics you can figure out simply by taking some time to muse about them – although I strongly advocate taking time to muse about them [...]

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December Gold Q&A

It is time to schedule the Gold Q&A for December!   My plan is to record it this weekend -- which means I need your QUESTIONS. So you have something to ask?  It can be holiday related, non-holiday related, and anything-related-to-the-blog related.  Go for it!   I'm more likely to answer questions that are relatively short and [...]

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A Truly Great New Testament Scholar: E. P. Sanders in Memoriam

I am dedicating this blog post to the memory of E. P. Sanders, one of the truly great scholars of the New Testament in modern times, who died November 21, 2022, age 85.  I was heavily influenced by his scholarship, already during graduate school, and I always considered him as the kind of massively learned [...]

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What about Forgeries IN the New Testament? Is it Possible?

I’ve been talking about some of the early Christian forgeries, books that Christian authors published claiming to be apostles when they were … someone else.   Could we have such things actually in the New Testament?  That is the topic I discuss in my book Forged (HarperOne: 2011).  I give extensive arguments and evidence throughout the [...]

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Forgeries in the Names of the Apostles: Some of the Most Interesting

As I pointed out in my previous posts, taken from the Preface of my book Forged (HarperOne, 2011), we still have numerous forged documents that emanated from the early church, numerous Gospels, Acts, Epistles, and Apocalypses (these are the four literary genres of the New Testament) all of them claiming to be written by apostles.  [...]

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