Bart Ehrman Quotes
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But the message was not only for Jews. It was for all people, Jew and gentile. And it came to gentiles apart from observing the Jewish law. Thus, to be members of God’s covenantal people, it was not necessary for gentiles to become Jews. They did not need to be circumcised, observe the Sabbath, keep kosher, or follow any of the other prescriptions of the law. They needed only to believe in the death and resurrection of the messiah Jesus. This was an earth-shattering realization for Paul.
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As a historian, I am struck by a certain consistency among otherwise independent witnesses in placing Mary Magdalene both at the cross and at the tomb on the third day. If this is not a historical datum but something that a Christian storyteller just made up and then passed along to others, how is it that this specific bit of information has found its way into accounts that otherwise did not make use of one another? Mary’s presence at the cross is found in Mark (and in Luke and Matthew, which used Mark) and also in John, which is independent of Mark. More significant still, all of our early Gospels—not just John and Mark (with Matthew and Luke as well) but also the Gospel of Peter, which appears to be independent of all of them—indicate that it was Mary Magdalene who discovered Jesus’ empty tomb. How did all of these independent accounts happen to name exactly the same person in this role? It seems hard to believe that this just happened by a way of a fluke of storytelling. It seems much more likely that, at least with the traditions involving the empty tomb, we are dealing with something actually rooted in history.
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The problem then with Jesus is that he cannot be removed from his time and transplanted into our own without simply creating him anew.
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It turns out that Jesus is not the good shepherd of the stained glass window of mark, he gets angry several times, he is somebody you don't want to mess with, he is powerful, he gets irritated.
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We have no writings from them, or writings of any kind, in fact, from the first two decades of the Christian movement.
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Ancient Jews had no expectation—zero expectation—that the future messiah would die and rise from the dead. That was not what the messiah was supposed to do. Whatever specific idea any Jew had about the messiah (as cosmic judge, mighty priest, powerful warrior), what they all thought was that he would be a figure of grandeur and power who would be a mighty ruler of Israel. And Jesus was certainly not that. Rather than destroying the enemy, Jesus was destroyed by the enemy—arrested, tortured, and crucified, the most painful and publicly humiliating form of death known to the Romans. Jesus, in short, was just the opposite of what Jews expected a messiah to be.
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Some scribes did not even care how they spell the words, sometimes you'll be reading a manuscript and you have the same word within a few lines and the word will be spelled three different ways!
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In terms of the historical record, I should also point out that there is no account in any ancient source whatsoever about King Herod slaughtering children in or around Bethlehem, or anyplace else. No other author, biblical or otherwise, mentions this event. Is it, like John's account of Jesus' death, a detail made up by Matthew in order to make some kind of theological point?
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As time goes on, thing do get made up.
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Justin alludes to his conversion, indicating that originally it was Christians’ martyrdom that showed him they deserved to be believed.34 They were willing to die for what they held dear. Of how many people can that be said? Or, to put it differently, how many martyrs for Zeus do we hear about?
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The approach taken to the Bible in almost all Protestant (and now Catholic) mainline seminaries is what is called the “historical-critical” method. It is completely different from the “devotional” approach to the Bible one learns in church. The devotional approach to the Bible is concerned about what the Bible has to say—especially what it has to say to me personally or to my society. What does the Bible tell me about God? Christ? The church? My relation to the world? What does it tell me about what to believe? About how to act? About social responsibilities? How can the Bible help make me closer to God? How does it help me to live?
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1a Christ died 2a For our sins 3a In accordance with the scriptures 4a And he was buried. 1b Christ was raised 2b On the third day 3b In accordance with the scriptures 4b And he appeared to Cephas.
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This is a consensus view among scholars today. For one thing, Matthew used Mark as a source for many of his stories, copying out the Greek word for word in some passages. If our Matthew was a Greek translation of a Hebrew original, it would not be possible to explain the verbatim agreement of Matthew with Mark in the Greek itself.
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Whether you are a believer—fundamentalist, evangelical, moderate, liberal—or a nonbeliever, the Bible is the most significant book in the history of our civilization. Coming to understand what it actually is, and is not, is one of the most important intellectual endeavors that anyone in our society can embark upon.
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Sometimes Christian apologists say there are only three options to who Jesus was: a liar, a lunatic or the Lord. But there could be a fourth option - legend.
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Only two people known by name were also called “Son of God.” One was the Roman emperor—starting with Octavian, or Caesar Augustus—and the other was Jesus. This is probably not an accident. When Jesus came on the scene as a divine man, he and the emperor were in competition.
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German scholar and skeptic Gerd Lüdemann argues that the visions of Jesus experienced by Peter, and then later by Paul, were psychologically induced.
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And so by carefully investigating what is here and now, we must seek for the things that can save us. We should flee, entirely, all the works of lawlessness; otherwise, they may overwhelm us. And we should hate the error of the present age, that we may be loved in the age to come. 2 We should not allow our souls to relax, thinking they can consort with sinners and the wicked; otherwise we may become like them.
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Henotheism is the view that there are other gods, but there is only one God who is to be worshipped. The Ten Commandments express a henotheistic view, as does the majority of the Hebrew Bible. The book of Isaiah, with its insistence that “I alone am God, there is no other,” is monotheistic. It represents the minority view in the Hebrew Bible.
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My overarching point is that the Gospels, and all the books of the Bible, are distinct and should not be read as if they are all saying the same thing. They are decidedly not saying the same thing—even when talking about the same subject (say, Jesus’ death). Mark is different from Luke, and Matthew is different from John, as you can see by doing your own horizontal reading of their respective stories of the crucifixion. The historical approach to the Gospels allows each author’s voice to be heard and refuses to conflate them into some kind of mega-Gospel that flattens the emphases of each one.
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The way to escape our entrapment in this world of matter is to acquire secret “knowledge” (= gnosis) from above of who we really are, how we came to be here, and how we can return to our heavenly, spiritual home.
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Such human passions as sexual desire and lust were regularly deemed completely unsuitable for the God of Israel. Anger and wrath, yes; sexual love, no.
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God was saving this world. He had destroyed the power of sin by the death of Jesus; he had destroyed the power of death by the resurrection of Jesus; and he would destroy the power of evil by the return of Jesus.
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Scholars have long recognized that Luke himself wrote these speeches—they are not the speeches that these apostles really delivered at one time or another. Luke is writing decades after the events he narrates, and no one at the time was taking notes.