Quotes from Bart D. Ehrman

If one wants to insist that God inspired the very words of scripture, what would be the point if we don't have the very words of scripture?

How did Jesus understand and describe himself? Did he talk about himself as a divine being? I will argue that he did not.

Jesus had been exalted to heaven and made to sit at the right hand of God as his unique Son.

dread three-headed hound of hell, Cerberus.

The great prince Michael is the chief archangel, head of God's heavenly armies and divinely appointed protector of the nation of Israel

Our Bibles today have chapter and verse divisions. These are extremely helpful, of course, since without them it is very hard indeed to tell someone where to find a passage. But the authors did not write in chapters and verses. One problem with our having them is that they make us think that the next chapter (or even verse) is changing the subject.

turn aside her sorrow with the sword" (ferroque averte dolorem;

This is the only verse in the entire Old Testament that uses the term "everlasting life.

belief in only one God, the creator of the world, who created everything out of nothing; belief in his Son, Jesus Christ, predicted by the prophets and born of the Virgin Mary; belief in his miraculous life, death, resurrection, and ascension; and belief in the Holy Spirit, who is present on earth until the end, when there will be a final judgment in which the righteous will be rewarded and the unrighteous condemned to eternal torment

Intentions are not the same as motivations. The "intention" is what you want to accomplish; the "motivation" is the reason you want to accomplish it.

Three beings make up a "Divine Triad." But they are so harmonious that they can be seen as a "unity," and this unity is itself the "God of the universe.

79 percent of Christians in America believe Jesus will be returning to earth at some point.

And so by carefully investigating what is here and now, we must seek for the things that can save us. We should flee, entirely, all the works of lawlessness; otherwise, they may overwhelm us. And we should hate the error of the present age, that we may be loved in the age to come. 2 We should not allow our souls to relax, thinking they can consort with sinners and the wicked; otherwise we may become like them.

Almost certainly the divine self-claims in John are not historical.

what the book of Revelation actually does say and how it says it, matters surprisingly overlooked by many so-called experts on biblical prophecy.

The quotations that Clement thought of as a second edition, Secret Mark, were in fact, Smith argued, part of the original Gospel of Mark, but were taken out by later scribes. And so the two versions of Mark were not, technically speaking, both produced by him. He wrote the longer version, and it came to be shortened by subsequent scribes who copied his text.13 Clement misunderstood the true relationship of these two versions.

A very common technique is simply to open the Bible at random—either with a particular concern in mind or hoping to learn whatever God "wants to tell me today"—and to read the first passage that strikes your eye

this is not reading the Bible as a book. It is using the Bible as a kind of Christian Ouija board.

Plato, too, had emphasized a kind of dualism of shadow and reality, matter and spirit.

Jesus's half brother James, who in this account is the son of Joseph from a previous marriage.

When the soldiers seize him, all his disciples flee. But there is someone else there, "a young man" who is "clothed with a linen cloth over his naked body." The soldiers grab this unnamed man, but he escapes, nude, leaving them with the linen cloth in their hands (Mark 14:51–52). Who is this person

In Arius's view, everything except for God himself had a beginning. Only God is "without beginning.

elite families with high connections.

fundamental question: Did Jesus and his disciples teach an orthodoxy that was transmitted to the churches of the second and third centuries?