The search for truth takes you where the evidence leads you, even if, at first, you don’t want to go there.
BART D. EHRMANI think the evidence is just so overwhelming that Jesus existed, that it’s silly to talk about him not existing.
More Bart D. Ehrman Quotes
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You can’t believe something just because someone else desperately wants you to.
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My students sometimes ask: what is a fundamentalist? I give them a very simple definition.
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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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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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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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Jesus 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.
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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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I think the evidence is just so overwhelming that Jesus existed, that it’s silly to talk about him not existing.
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There are few things more dangerous than inbred religious certainty.
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A fundamentalist is no fun, too much damn, and not enough mental.
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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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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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Did 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?
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As time goes on, thing do get made up.
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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.
BART D. EHRMAN