Bart D Ehrman

Bart D. Ehrman, the New York Times bestselling author of Jesus, Interrupted and God's Problem reveals which books in the Bible's New Testament were not passed down by Jesus's disciples, but were instead forged by other hands-and why this centuries-hidden scandal is far more significant than many scholars are willing to admit. A controversial work of historical reporting in the tradition of Elaine Pagels, Marcus Borg, and John Dominic Crossan, Ehrman's...

New York Times bestselling author and Bible expert Bart Ehrman reveals how Jesus's divinity became dogma in the first few centuries of the early church.The claim at the heart of the Christian faith is that Jesus of Nazareth was, and is, God. But this is not what the original disciples believed during Jesus's lifetime-and it is not what Jesus claimed about himself. How Jesus Became God tells the story of an idea that shaped Christianity, and of the...

Large numbers of atheists, humanists, and conspiracy theorists are raising one of the most pressing questions in the history of religion: "Did Jesus exist at all?" Was he invented out of whole cloth for nefarious purposes by those seeking to control the masses? Or was Jesus such a shadowy figure -- far removed from any credible historical evidence -- that he bears no meaningful resemblance to the person described in the Bible? In Did Jesus Exist?...

The problems with the Bible that New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman discussed in his bestseller Misquoting Jesus-and on The Daily Show with John Stewart, NPR, and Dateline NBC, among others-are expanded upon exponentially in his latest book: Jesus, Interrupted. This New York Times bestseller reveals how books in the Bible were actually forged by later authors, and that the New Testament itself is riddled with contradictory claims about Jesus-information...

The discovering of the Gospel of Judas Iscariot was major news, but what was its practical effect? How does it change our understanding of Judas? Does its content confirm or contradict other Christian texts? Does it change what we know about Jesus and about the beginnings of Christianity? The leading authority on this gospel, early church historian Bart Ehrman, offers the first complete account of the discovery it and illuminates the significance...

A "humane, thoughtful, and intelligent" (The New York Times Book Review) bestselling Biblical scholar reveals why our popular understanding of the Apocalypse is all wrong—and why that matters.
You'll find nearly everything the Bible says about the end in the Book of Revelation: a mystifying prophecy filled with bizarre symbolism, violent imagery, mangled syntax, confounding contradictions, and very firm ideas about the...

By the fourth century, the theological understanding known as "orthodoxy" became predominant. Investigate the relationship between orthodoxy and "heresy", or conflicting conceptions of the faith, and evidence that orthodoxy was not the original form of Christianity. Learn about early "proto-orthodox" writers, and their contention that Jesus was both fully God and fully human.

Conclude by considering the historical ramifications of the Nicean affirmation that Jesus was God. Learn about the growing Christian faith's effects on paganism and the advent of anti-Jewish thought and action. Observe how the theological debates continued, and review Jesus's path to becoming the object of faith for billions today.

The writings that make up the New Testament stand at the very foundation of Christianity. But while Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and the other books of the New Testament are known to almost everyone, the writings that Christians produced in the decades that followed these earliest compositions remain shrouded in virtual anonymity. Who were the Apostolic Fathers? Why were they given that name? And what windows into the shaping of Christianity's canon,...

In the second and third centuries, Christian groups followed radically different beliefs and theologies. Learn about the "docetists", who believed Jesus was not human, but only appeared to be so, highlighting Marcion, a docetist who conceived of two distinct gods - a God of the Jews and a God of Jesus.