Over at his blog, biblical scholar Bart Ehrman addressed a question asked of him by a parent wondering why he should send his son to the university where Ehrman teaches to take his class on the Bible if Ehrman doesn't actually believe in the book about which he is teaching. As Ehrman points out, going... Continue Reading →
Bart D. Ehrman, Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2020), 192-193. As it turns out, it is possible to trace a trajectory in our surviving Gospels away from the deeply apocalyptic teachings of Jesus in Mark and Matthew, to less apocalyptic teachings in the later Gospel of Luke, to non-apocalyptic... Continue Reading →
Bart D. Ehrman, Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2020), 177. Undoubtedly the most important passage for Paul's view of the future resurrection is 1 Corinthians 15. The chapter, in fact, is often called "the resurrection chapter." It is also one of the most misread passages in all of the... Continue Reading →
Over on his blog, NT scholar Bart Ehrman addresses the question, “What if we had the ‘original’ Gospels?” Apologists seemingly believe that if we had an original copy of Mark or Matthew that it would give what they wrote some degree of credibility. In essence, they do think we have the original reading of these texts, albeit... Continue Reading →
Bart D. Ehrman, Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2020), 133-134. It is important to reflect back on how understandings of the afterlife shifted over time in ancient Israel. It is not necessarily the case that there was a straight linear development, that every Jew everywhere thought the same thing at... Continue Reading →
Readers of my blog have noticed that over the past couple of weeks I have been throwing up brief snippets from Bart Ehrman’s latest book Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife (Simon & Schuster, 2020). I for one have enjoyed this volume by Ehrman and have learned quite a bit, mostly concerning Greco-Roman views of... Continue Reading →
Bart D. Ehrman, Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2020), 125. In the later Jewish doctrine of the resurrection, God reverses death by bringing the breath of life back into the body, ensuring it will never die again. Unlike in the Greek tradition, here the person is made immortal. Immortality is... Continue Reading →
Bart D. Ehrman, Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2020), 120-121. The pseudonymous authorship...is a literary ploy used by authors to convince their readers that they know what was soon to happen, and so to provide comfort for them in their time of trouble. That is certainly the case with... Continue Reading →
Bart D. Ehrman, Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2020), 113. Another reason for thinking Isaiah 53 does not refer to just one person, the future messiah who would die for sins, is that the passage describes the suffering of the servant as a past event, not future:... Continue Reading →
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