Bart D. Ehrman's Blog

So: I've started to work on my next book (or books, depending on how things go), on how we got the canon of the New Testament.  Why these 27 books?  Why not others?  Who decided?  When?  On what grounds?  etc. I started thinking about this issue already as an 18-year-old in Bible college, but at [...]

The post My First Scholarly Encounter with the Canon of the New Testament appeared first on The Bart Ehrman Blog.

As I indicated in my previous post, I’m planning to write a book (after the one on charity in early Christianity) explaining how we got the canon of the New Testament.  Who choose the books?  On what grounds?  And when? In this post I thought I'd show the kind of think I'll be interested in, [...]

The post Why Wasn’t Peter’s Apocalypse Included in the New Testament? appeared first on The Bart Ehrman Blog.

Now that my book Love Thy Stranger is done, in press, being prepared for publication (March 24!  You can preorder it with a price guarantee from Amazon already), and, as far as I am concerned with, over and done with, I have moved on to the next project, or projects.  I THINK it will be two -- [...]

The post My Next Book: Creating the Bible — How We Got the Canon of the New Testament appeared first on The Bart Ehrman Blog.

I have been providing bullet-point summaries of the books of the New Testament, based on my fuller "nutshell summaries,"  along with some questions to think about in reflecting on the books.  With this post I will complete the undisputed Pauline epistles, that is, the seven letters that by virtual consensus are considered to be authentically [...]

The post Paul’s Letters to the Philippians and to Philemon, “At a Glance” and with Questions for Reflection appeared first on The Bart Ehrman Blog.

If you've been following along with the blog the last few years, you've probably heard various rumblings about a new blog platform. You might have even have periodically wondered, "Is that project still happening? What's the latest?"  We're excited to let you know that the first phase of the new platform we've been working on [...]

The post Scheduled Blog Maintenance – Monday Sept. 8th appeared first on The Bart Ehrman Blog.

Here some more of the excellent questions I have received from readers, and my responses.   QUESTION: Dale Allison has said that the word for buried in 1 Corinthians 15 means to be buried in a mass grave, tomb or stone cave but it does not mean in a shallow grave where bird eat the [...]

The post Questions: Did Paul state that Jesus was put in a tomb? Is Jesus like Pagan gods? Is the hope for a messiah like the belief in Santa? appeared first on The Bart Ehrman Blog.

I now provide a bullet point list that summarizes "at a glance" Paul's very first surviving letter (and therefore the earliest Christian writing of any kind that we have!), along with some questions to reflect on based on this very interesting text.  It's a short but fascinating letter; if you don't remember it very well, [...]

The post 1 Thessalonians at a Glance, and Questions for Reflection appeared first on The Bart Ehrman Blog.

I see that I have fallen behind in this series on the “New Testament in a Nutshell” in my posts that provide a bullet-point overview of each book (“at a glance”) and the kinds of questions I ask my students to reflect on after they have studied the text.  Catch-up time!  Here I deal with [...]

The post Paul’s Letter to the Galatians “At a Glance” and Questions for Reflection appeared first on The Bart Ehrman Blog.

I am (also) this semester teaching one of my favorite undergraduate courses, The Birth of Christianity, which more or less covers the history and literature of Christianity from just after the New Testament period up to the mid to end of the 4th century, focusing mainly on issues of the second and third centuries.  For [...]

The post The Birth of Christianity (My Other Class): Check Out the Writing Assignments! appeared first on The Bart Ehrman Blog.

For the first time since roughly the Pleistocene Age, I am teaching a new and different undergraduate course at UNC this semester.  It's a course I taught in a very different form when I was just starting out at Rutgers, in probably 1986 or so; I haven't taught it since, and actually don't remember how [...]

The post The Bible and Suffering: My NEW Course at UNC This Term appeared first on The Bart Ehrman Blog.