Bart Ehrman Quotes
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Books played virtually no role in the polytheistic religions of the ancient Western world.
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The problem comes when readers take these two accounts and combine them into one overarching account, in which Jesus says, does, and experiences everything narrated in both Gospels. When that is done, the messages of both Mark and Luke get completely lost and glossed over. Jesus is no longer in deep agony, as in Mark (since he is confident as in Luke), and he is no longer calm and in control as in Luke (since he is in despair as in Mark). He is somehow all things at once. Also
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Constantius II ordered pagan temples closed and sacrificial practices stopped. We have already seen a law issued in 341 CE: “Superstition shall cease; the madness of sacrifices shall be abolished... anyone... who performs sacrifices . . . shall suffer the infliction of a suitable punishment and the effect of an immediate sentence” (Theodosian Code 16.10.2). In a law of 346 CE, the penalties are specified: Temples “in all places and in all cities” are to be “immediately closed” and “access to them forbidden.” No one may perform a sacrifice. Anyone who does “shall be struck down with the avenging sword” and his “property shall be confiscated.” Any governor who fails to avenge such crimes “shall be similarly punished” (Theodosian Code 16.10.4); And perhaps more drastically, later in Constantius’s reign, in 356: “Anyone who sacrifices or worships images shall be executed” (Theodosian Code 16.10.6).
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This is how readers over the years have come up with the famous “seven last words of the dying Jesus”—by taking what he says at his death in all four Gospels, mixing them together, and imagining that in their combination they now have the full story. This interpretive move does not give the full story. It gives a fifth story, a story that is completely unlike any of the canonical four, a fifth story that in effect rewrites the Gospels, producing a fifth Gospel. This
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Many Christians today may think that the canon of the New Testament simply appeared on the scene one day, soon after the death of Jesus, but nothing could be farther from the truth.
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Approximately half the Roman Empire claimed allegiance to the Christian faith by about 400 CE. The empire as a whole is thought to have comprised some sixty million people at the time.
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In this pre-Lukan tradition, Jesus was made the Son of God at the resurrection. This is a view Luke inherited from his tradition, and it is one that coincides closely with what we already saw in Romans 1:3–4. It appears to be the earliest form of Christian belief: that God exalted Jesus to be his Son by raising him from the dead.
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Because of the open nature of polytheism, there was virtually no such thing as “conversion.” Anyone who chose to begin worshiping a new god was welcome to do so and was not required or expected to leave behind any previous practices of worship or make an exclusive commitment to this one deity.
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If Jesus really were equal with God from “the beginning,” before he came to earth, and he knew it, then surely the Synoptic Gospels would have mentioned this at some point. Wouldn’t that be the most important thing about him? But no, in Matthew, Mark, and Luke he does not talk about himself in this way—nor does he do so in their sources (Q, M, and L).
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WE HAVE SEEN THAT those holding adoptionist views of Christ claimed to represent the earliest views of Jesus’s own apostles .. Docetic views, when first we meet them, appear to have emerged out of incarnation Christologies later in the first century—but still during the times of the New Testament.
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Origen delved into theological areas that had not yet been examined by any of his predecessors in the faith .. Later theologians questioned his orthodoxy, and he was faulted for developing ideas that subsequently led to the major theological schism, the Arian controversy.
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In 303 CE, the Roman emperor Diocletian declared war on the Christian church and instigated the most massive persecution it ever endured. In 312 CE, the emperor Constantine himself converted to become a Christian. In 391 to 392 CE, the vehemently orthodox Christian Theodosius declared all pagan practices illegal and in effect made Christianity the state religion of Rome. With the growth of Christianity came moments of heightened intolerance. Sometimes this intolerance erupted in ugly acts of violence, suppression, and coercion. Christians were not, of course, the only intolerant people on the planet. They themselves had been the victims of violent coercion early in the century.
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Some people today claim that cultures rooted in oral tradition are far more careful to make certain that traditions that are told and retold are not changed significantly. This turns out to be a modern myth, however. Anthropologists who have studied oral cultures show that just the opposite is the case. Only literary cultures have a concern for exact replication of the facts “as they really are.” And this is because in literary cultures, it is possible to check the sources to see whether someone has changed a story. In oral cultures, it is widely expected that stories will indeed change—they change anytime a storyteller is telling a story in a new context. New contexts require new ways of telling stories. Thus, oral cultures historically have seen no problem with altering accounts as they were told and retold.
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In the entire first Christian century Jesus is not mentioned by a single Greek or Roman historian, religion scholar, politician, philosopher or poet. His name never occurs in a single inscription, and it is never found in a single piece of private correspondence. Zero! Zip references!
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It took at least three hundred years of debate before the question of the canon even began to reach closure. The decisions that were eventually made were not handed down from on high, and they did not come right away. The canon was the result of a slow and often painful process, in which lots of disagreements were aired and different points of view came to be expressed, debated, accepted, and suppressed.
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When she was young, Peter learned in a vision from God that if she remained healthy, she would lead many astray; she apparently was beautiful as a child, and as an adult she would entice men to sleep with her. When she was ten, a next-door neighbor attempted to seduce her, but before he could sleep with her, she became paralyzed, by the mercy of God. The neighbor went blind for his troubles, until healed by Peter and converted to faith in Christ. But the girl had to remain paralyzed, lest she lead others astray. Here again the point is perfectly clear: sex is dangerous and to be avoided at all costs, even if it means being an invalid for life.
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There are more differences in our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament.
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Nero did not, technically speaking, prosecute Christians for being Christian. He executed them for committing arson. True, they probably were not guilty, but that was the charge. Being a Christian was not punishable, but setting fire to Rome was. Nero’s persecution was localized. It involved only the city of Rome. Nothing indicates that Christians elsewhere in the empire suffered any consequences. Even more significant, it appears that none of Nero’s successors down to Trajan (ruled 98–117 CE) persecuted Christians. Between Nero in 64 CE and Marcus Aurelius in 177 CE, the only mention of an emperor’s intervention in Christian affairs, apart from the episode involving Trajan found in Pliny’s letters, is a letter from the emperor Hadrian that gives instructions to a local governor to conduct his trials against the Christians fairly.
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The Bible is filled with discrepancies, many of them irreconcilable contradictions. Moses did not write the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament) and Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John did not write the Gospels. There are other books that did not make it into the Bible that at one time or another were considered canonical—other Gospels, for example, allegedly written by Jesus’ followers Peter, Thomas, and Mary. The Exodus probably did not happen as described in the Old Testament. The conquest of the Promised Land is probably based on legend. The Gospels are at odds on numerous points and contain nonhistorical material. It is hard to know whether Moses ever existed and what, exactly, the historical Jesus taught. The historical narratives of the Old Testament are filled with legendary fabrications and the book of Acts in the New Testament contains historically unreliable information about the life and teachings of Paul. Many of the books of the New Testament are pseudonymous—written not by the apostles but by later writers claiming to be apostles. The list goes on.
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I should point out that the Gospels do not indicate on which day Jesus was raised. The women go to the tomb on the third day, and they find it empty. But none of the Gospels indicates that Jesus arose that morning before the women showed up. He could just as well have arisen the day before or even the day before that—just an hour, say, after he had been buried. The Gospels simply don’t say.
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Then Elizabeth moaned and said, “Mountain of God, receive a mother with her child.” For Elizabeth was not able to climb the mountain. And straight away the mountain split open and received her. And the mountain was shining a light on her, for an angel of the Lord was with them, protecting them.
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I think the evidence is just so overwhelming that Jesus existed, that it's silly to talk about him not existing. I don't know anyone who is a responsible historian, who is actually trained in the historical method, or anybody who is a biblical scholar who does this for a living, who gives any credence at all to any of this.
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And so Christianity was the only evangelistic religion that we know of in antiquity, and, along with Judaism, it was also the only one that was exclusive. That combination of evangelism and exclusion proved to be decisive.
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On the latter point, it was sometimes noted that Christians gathered together under the cloak of darkness, calling one another "brother" and "sister" and greeting one another with kisses; they were said to worship their god by eating the flesh and drinking the blood of the Son of God. What was one to make of such practices? If you can imagine the worst, you won't be far off. Pagan opponents claimed that Christians engaged in ritual incest (sexual acts with brothers and sisters), infanticide (killing the Son), and cannibalism (eating his flesh and drinking his blood). These charges may seem incredible today, but in a society that respected decency and openness, they were widely accepted. Christians were perceived as a nefarious lot.