In the entire first Christian century Jesus is not mentioned by a single Greek or Roman historian, religion scholar, politician, philosopher or poet.
BART D. EHRMANIn the entire first Christian century Jesus is not mentioned by a single Greek or Roman historian, religion scholar, politician, philosopher or poet.
More Bart D. Ehrman Quotes
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My students sometimes ask: what is a fundamentalist? I give them a very simple definition.
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As time goes on, thing do get made up.
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A fundamentalist is no fun, too much damn, and not enough mental.
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You can’t believe something just because someone else desperately wants you to.
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I have such a fantastic life that I feel an overwhelming sense of gratitude for it. . . . But I don’t have anyone to express my gratitude to. This is a void deep inside me, a void of wanting someone to thank, and I don’t see any plausible way of filling it.
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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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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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In Matthew, Jesus declares, “Whoever is not with me is against me.” In Mark, he says,“Whoever is not against us is for us.”
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Everything we hear and see we need to evaluate—whether the inspiring writings of the Bible or the inspiring writings of Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, or George Eliot, of Ghandi, Desmond Tutu, or the Dalai Lama.
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Far and away the most changes are the result of mistakes pure and simple slips of the pen, accidental omissions, inadvertent additions, misspelled words, blunders of one sort or another.
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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.
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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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The search for truth takes you where the evidence leads you, even if, at first, you don’t want to go there.
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[P]eople need to use their intelligence to evaluate what they find to be true and untrue in the Bible. This is how we need to live life generally.
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Traditionally in Christian circles, Judas in fact has been associated with Jews. Of being traitors, avaricious, who in fact, betray Jesus, who are Christ-killers. And this portrayal of Judas of course also leads then to horrendous acts of anti-Semitism through the centuries.
BART D. EHRMAN