Bart D. Ehrman's Blog, page 366

QUESTION:

THIS QUESTION FROM A MEMBER OF THE BLOG QUOTES SOMETHING I SAID IN MY PREVIOUS POST AND THEN ASKS A QUESTION ABOUT IT:

“As I’ve intimated, my own view is that these patriarchal narratives are not historical accounts of people who actually lived and did the things ascribed to them. I see them as highly legendary, narratives told by the people of Israel – after they became the people of Israel (say in the 11th or 10th centuries) — about their “early days.” Stories circulated for years a...

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I have received some interesting responses, both in comments on the blog and privately, about my post yesterday on domesticated camels in the land of Palestine. Some readers are (re-)convinced that you can’t trust the Bible for one blasted thing; others think that it’s just a picayune point since camels are not really much of a big deal in the narratives of Genesis. So maybe I should provide a bit of background and explain what I see to be the significance of this new finding.

First, on camels...

The post More on Camels and Genesis (For members) appeared first on Christianity in Antiquity (CIA): The Bart Ehrman Blog.

Something different. A long time-member of the blog, Ron Taska, has sent this along to me. Biblical scholars for years have argued that the camels one finds in the patriarchal narratives of Genesis (Gen. 12-50) are anachronistic, since camels were not yet domesticated in the times in which the Patriarchs allegedly lived. (I’m one of those scholars who doubts whether the Patriarchs of Genesis are historical figures at all; but that’s another question.) Here is some recent scientific evidence t...

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QUESTION:

I know that the “Gospel of Philip does not have much if any real historical veracity to it about Jesus’ life, but does the references about Jesus and Mary Magdalene being lovers and the holes in the papyrus ‘kissing’ verse (verses 32 and 55 in your “Lost Scriptures” book), help support the view that this most likely Gnostic Christian sect truly believed and taught that Jesus and Mary M were married?

RESPONSE:

Yes, this is one of those questions I get asked about on occasion. I have a r...

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I was asked to speak at the Getty Museum, in the Harold M. Williams Auditorium in Los Angeles, California on Thursday, September 22, 2011 during the exhibition “In the Beginning Was the Word: Medieval Gospel Illumination.”

Illuminated manuscripts from the Middle Ages are significant for the literary texts they preserve. But they are also important, historically and culturally, for their illustrations of the life of Jesus and other figures associated with him. These artistic representations tel...

In my previous post I was answering the following question: “where did the origin of Mary Magdalene as an escort/ sex worker come from?” I began my answer by citing a passage from my book onPeter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene, where I explained that a number of passages in the New Testament in which women are said to appear are often said / assumed to be about Mary Magdalene, even though she is not mentioned in them. That is where I will pick up the conversation here, to show that these stories a...