Bart D. Ehrman's Blog, page 344

In my last couple of posts I began to describe how my edition of the Apocryphal Gospels came about. After having done the Apostolic Fathers in two volumes for the Loeb, I had decided never to do another translation project again. Too hard! But then, forgetting my decision, I thought it would be useful to have a Greek/Latin – English version of the early Christian non-canonical Gospels. And at the urging of the editor at Harvard, submitted a proposal also for the Loeb Classical Library. But th...

With this post I would like to request that everyone on the blog consider making a donation, above and beyond your membership fee. I know that some of you simply cannot afford to do so, and that, of course, is absolutely fine. Others of you simply do not want to do so, and that also is absolutely fine. But if you have the means and the will, I would very much like you to consider my request.

My proposed amount is $20. If everyone were to make a donation of that amount, we would stand a very go...

My previous two posts were meant to be a kind of lead-up to this one; this thread started by my talking about the times I have published both a scholarly work and a trade book for popular audiences on the same topic. The third and most recent time had to do with an edition of the Apocryphal Gospels. I’ve now given some of the backstory: I had done a translation project creating a new bi-lingual edition of the Apostolic Fathers for the Loeb Classical Library, and had vowed I would never do som...

In my last post, en route to discussing my latest attempt at publishing both a scholarly and a trade book on the same topic, I talked about how I took on the task of doing a new Greek-English edition of the Apostolic Fathers for the Loeb Classical Library. At the end of the post I indicated that doing that edition was one of the hardest things I have ever done. There were lots of things that made it very difficult – deciding which form of the Greek text to use for each of the writings include...

The third time I produced both a scholarly and a trade book on the same topic was a completely different situation from the other two I have described. One thing that was similar was that in this instance yet again I had no idea, initially, of producing a trade version, but planned simply to publish a work of scholarship. Only later did I realize that a trade version could be very useful.

This scholarly book – trade book combination involved an edition of the apocryphal Gospels. To explain how...

A couple of posts ago I mentioned the books that I anticipate writing in the future. I like to plan my life in advance. I like to plan my week in advance. I like to plan my day in advance. I like to plan. For my current ten-year publishing plan, the two immediate goals are not so immediate, as they will take three or four years, I should think. The next book, I hope, will be the trade book for popular audiences on the oral traditions of Jesus in the years before the Gospels were written; that...

I indicated in my previous post that I would say a few things about each of the books that I am planning – today at least – to try to write over the next ten years or so. The very next book will be trade book on Jesus Before the Gospels, a study of what happened to the stories about Jesus as they were altered, and invented, by Christians circulating them word of mouth before the writing of the Gospels. The next book after that will be a scholarly treatment of the same thing. Or that’s the pla...

On May 3 of this year I gave a lecture at a meeting of the Freedom from Religion Foundation in Raleigh NC. The lecture is about what it is like to be an agnostic who writes about religion. That’s an irony that I am constantly aware of and most of the lecture is about my experience as a non-religious person who is an expert in something he doesn’t believe in.

I also used the lecture to stress that being “free from religion” is not the same thing as “attacking religion.” I absolutely agree with...

I mentioned in my previous post that I’ve been in London for the summer, spending almost all my time reading books. I should clarify that I’m not *only* reading books while I’m here! Among other things,once a week I’ve been taking my daily walk (I normally walk an hour a day around Wimbledon, where our flat is) to the large park nearby, and sit on a bench, listening to music with my earphones, watching people play football (a.k.a. soccer) or cricket with their kids, and smoking a very big cig...

I need to clarify something that I said in my earlier post today about my next project, since I have elicited several demurrals in response, and it was because I didn’t express myself very clearly. What I said was this:

Scholars have long held that Mark was the first of our Gospels to be written, and that it probably appeared sometime around the year 70 CE. Some scholars think it might have been a bit before that (I used to think that); more scholars think that it might have been a bit after....