[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.
BART D. EHRMAN[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.
BART D. EHRMANThe problem then with Jesus is that he cannot be removed from his time and transplanted into our own without simply creating him anew
BART D. EHRMANDid he say both things? Could he mean both things? How can both be true at once? Or is it possible that one of the Gospel writers got things switched around?
BART D. EHRMANYou can’t believe something just because someone else desperately wants you to.
BART D. EHRMANSometimes 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.
BART D. EHRMANTraditionally 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. EHRMANAs time goes on, thing do get made up.
BART D. EHRMANFar 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.
BART D. EHRMANEverything 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.
BART D. EHRMANJesus existed, and those vocal persons who deny it do so not because they have considered the evidence with the dispassionate eye of the historian, but because they have some other agenda that this denial serves.
BART D. EHRMANMy students sometimes ask: what is a fundamentalist? I give them a very simple definition.
BART D. EHRMANHis name never occurs in a single inscription, and it is never found in a single piece of private correspondence. Zero! Zip references!
BART D. EHRMANIn Matthew, Jesus declares, “Whoever is not with me is against me.” In Mark, he says,“Whoever is not against us is for us.”
BART D. EHRMANIn 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.
BART D. EHRMANDifferent authors have different points of view. You can’t just say, ‘I believe in the Bible.
BART D. EHRMANI 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.
BART D. EHRMAN