INTRODUCTION If you were to ask my dad how he became a Christian, he would no doubt tell you about his friend who handed him a King James Version New Testament and asked him to read the Gospel of John. As a single dad in his early 30s, struggling to raise his two daughters, coming... Continue Reading →
For other posts in this series, please visit the series' page. The Christian Defenders' second reason for believing that the Bible is true is that the Bible contains "embarrassing details." They begin, If I were to create a religious book I would make sure its theology, details, and people were flawless. I wouldn’t leave questions... Continue Reading →
"The stories of the ancestors of the Israelites do not come from any one period but developed over time. It is best to see the ancestors as composite characters." - John McDermott Bart Ehrman asks and answers the question "Why does it matter if Mark's Gospel was written first?" What it boils down to is... Continue Reading →
In the Gospel of Mark, the first four disciples that Jesus calls to follow him (akoloutheō) are Simon, Andrew, James, and John (Mark 1:16-20). All four of those men were fishing on the Sea of Galilee when Jesus walked by and all four of them dropped their nets to follow him. Both the Gospel of... Continue Reading →
Bart D. Ehrman, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings, sixth edition (OUP, 2016), 187-188. This verse [i.e. John 9:22] is significant from a socio-historical perspective because we know that there was no official policy against accepting Jesus (or anyone else) as messiah during his lifetime. On the other hand, some Jewish... Continue Reading →
This is the fifth and final post in a series examining pop-apologist Heather Schuldt’s attempt to take down New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman. The four previous posts can be viewed here: Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. In this post we will be looking at Schuldt’s attempt to reconcile the seemingly divergent times... Continue Reading →
In our first post we discussed Heather Schuldt's blog post "5 Examples Why Bart Ehrman Is Not a Gospel Expert."1 We addressed specifically issues concerning the dating of the Synoptic Gospels, briefly giving an overview of why Mark is dated to around 70 CE and Matthew and Luke to post-70. We also showed that Schuldt's use... Continue Reading →
Over at his blog Theology in Motion, Carey Bryant posted a piece entitled "The Gospel of John as an Eyewitness Account," summarizing why he thinks the Johannine Gospel is an eyewitness account to the life of Jesus. He makes four main arguments: The author was familiar with Jewish culture. The author seems to identify himself as... Continue Reading →
Here's the Weekly Roundup! (Note: there will be no Roundup next Friday.) Over at bibleinterp.com there is an excerpt from John: Interpreted by Early Christian and Medieval Commentators (Eerdmans, 2018) entitled "The Spiritual Gospel: The Gospel of John in the Early Church." In this excerpt Bryan Stewart discusses the way early Christian writers viewed and used the fourth... Continue Reading →
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