Quotes from Bart D. Ehrman

The Apology of Socrates was Plato's account of the legal defense that Socrates made at his trial in Athens. The speech itself is one of the great classics of ancient literature. They executed him anyway.

their guardian spirits take them to the place of judgment, where they undergo the "necessary experiences" as long as required to rid them of their impurities.

in the Roman world it was widely thought that gods could take on human guise, such that some of the people one might meet on occasion may well indeed be divine

But the historian is no more able to pronounce on ultimate "truth" than anyone else. That is to say, historians cannot decide who is right in the question of whether there is one God or two; they can simply show what different people have thought at different times.

At about the same time that apologies began to be written, Christians started producing accounts of their persecutions and the martyrdoms that happened as a result of them.

if the ends are sufficiently important to require lies instead of the truth.

Then Elizabeth moaned and said, "Mountain of God, receive a mother with her child." For Elizabeth was not able to climb the mountain. And straight away the mountain split open and received her. And the mountain was shining a light on her, for an angel of the Lord was with them, protecting them.

Eventually incarnation Christologies developed significantly and overtook exaltation Christologies, which came to be deemed inadequate and, eventually, "heretical.

And the side that knew how to utilize power was the side that won.

But the message was not only for Jews. It was for all people, Jew and gentile. And it came to gentiles apart from observing the Jewish law. Thus, to be members of God's covenantal people, it was not necessary for gentiles to become Jews. They did not need to be circumcised, observe the Sabbath, keep kosher, or follow any of the other prescriptions of the law. They needed only to believe in the death and resurrection of the messiah Jesus. This was an earth-shattering realization for Paul.

It is also the portrait of Christ many people prefer today. It is a portrait that enables and encourages Jesus's followers to embrace violence, vengeance, domination, and exploitation, to do whatever it takes to assert their will on others.

We call these books Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John because they are named after two of Jesus's earthly disciples, Matthew the tax collector and John the beloved disciple, and two of the close companions of other apostles, Mark the secretary of Peter and Luke the traveling companion of Paul.

1a Christ died 2a For our sins 3a In accordance with the scriptures 4a And he was buried. 1b Christ was raised 2b On the third day 3b In accordance with the scriptures 4b And he appeared to Cephas.

Christ "reflects the glory of God and bears the very stamp of his nature, upholding the universe by his word of power" (1:3).

For now my point is that most readers don't see these differences because they have been trained, or at least are inclined, to read the Bible in only one way, vertically, whereas the historical approach suggests that it is also useful to read it another way, horizontally.

And so Christianity was the only evangelistic religion that we know of in antiquity, and, along with Judaism, it was also the only one that was exclusive. That combination of evangelism and exclusion proved to be decisive

only two people known by name were also called "Son of God." One was the Roman emperor—starting with Octavian, or Caesar Augustus—and the other was Jesus. This is probably not an accident. When Jesus came on the scene as a divine man, he and the emperor were in competition.

He came to believe in the preexistence of souls. In this view, not only did Christ preexist his appearance on earth as a human, so did everyone else.

The Need for an Empty Tomb ... If there was no empty tomb, Jesus was not physically raised.

apocalypses, in which an author is given a secret revelation about the divine, heavenly mysteries that can make sense of the mundane, earthly realities.

Jesus says, "You have heard it said, 'Whoever divorces his wife should give her a certificate of divorce' [a command found in Deut. 24:1], but I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife for reason other than sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery." It is hard to see how one can follow Moses' command to give a certificate of divorce, if in fact divorce is not an option.

Within Judaism we find divine beings who temporarily become human, semidivine beings who are born of the union of a divine being and a mortal, and humans who are, or who become, divine.

the truth that people should prefer to suffer injustice than commit it, that they should actually be good instead of simply seeming to be.

The Synoptics simply accept a Christological view that is different from Paul's. They hold to exaltation Christologies, and Paul holds to an incarnation Christology.