Career
Ehrman taught at Rutgers University from 1985 to 1988, then joined the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he has taught since 1988 and served as department chair from 2000 to 2006. [4] He was named James A. Gray Distinguished Professor in 2003. [4] In 2025, he announced that he is planning to retire from UNC at the end of the year. [10] He has recorded multiple courses with The Teaching Company, including series on the New Testament and the historical Jesus. [6] He is the author of widely assigned textbooks, including The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings. [11]
Scholarship and writings
Much of Ehrman's early scholarship addressed the Greek manuscript tradition of the New Testament and the ways theological controversy shaped textual transmission. His The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture argues that some scribal changes reflect early Christological debates. [12] His Forgery and Counterforgery analyzes literary deceit and ancient charges of pseudepigraphy in early Christian polemics. [13]
Ehrman has written for broader audiences on the historical Jesus and the development of Christian belief. Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium presents Jesus as a first-century Jewish apocalyptic preacher. [14] Did Jesus Exist? defends the historical existence of Jesus against mythicist claims. [15] Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife and Journeys to Heaven and Hell study ancient afterlife traditions and their reception in early Christianity. [16] [17] Armageddon: What the Bible Really Says about the End examines the Book of Revelation and modern apocalyptic interpretation. [18] Simon & Schuster lists a forthcoming book, Love Thy Stranger, to be released on March 24, 2026. [19]
Public engagement
Ehrman regularly lectures for public audiences and appears in media. He has recorded multiple series with The Great Courses and maintains a membership blog, The Bart Ehrman Blog, that donates all membership fees to charity, with more than $3 million reportedly raised by 2025. [6] [7] A 2020 Time essay summarized key claims in Heaven and Hell for general readers. [20]
Awards and honors
Ehrman received the American Humanist Association's Religious Liberty Award in 2011. [2] He held National Humanities Center fellowships in 2009–10 and 2018–19 for projects on ancient forgery and early Christian afterlife narratives. [3] He has received multiple university teaching awards at UNC, including the Pope Center Spirit of Inquiry Teaching Award and the Undergraduate Students' Teaching Award. [4] He was named a Guggenheim Fellow in 2018 in the field of Religion. [21]
Religious views
Ehrman has said he progressed from evangelical belief to agnosticism, identifying the problem of suffering as decisive. He has written, "the problem of suffering became for me the problem of faith" [22] and has said, "I no longer go to church, no longer believe, no longer consider myself a Christian". [23] In a 2008 interview he said, "I simply didn't believe that there was a God of any sort". [24]
Ehrman has said that he is both agnostic and atheist but that "I usually confuse people when I tell them I'm both". "Atheism is a statement about faith and agnosticism is a statement about epistemology", he said. [25] [26]
Ehrman argues that Jesus of Nazareth existed historically, and has summarized the claim in popular form "he did exist, whether we like it or not". [27] His position on Christology is historical rather than confessional. In summarizing How Jesus Became God, NPR recorded his judgment that "Jesus himself didn't call himself God and didn't consider himself God". [28] He has also written that Jesus did not teach postmortem reward and punishment as popularly conceived. [29] In a 2020 essay he argued that Jesus proclaimed resurrection and the coming kingdom rather than eternal torment. [30]
Reception
Scholars have assessed Ehrman's trade books as effective popularization and as polemical in tone. Daniel B. Wallace's review of Misquoting Jesus in the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society called the opening chapters "a very good" introduction to New Testament textual criticism, then argued that the book "paints a very bleak picture of scribal activity" and that Ehrman "overstates his case". [31]
Larry Hurtado judged How Jesus Became God to be aimed at lay readers "generally unacquainted with this scholarly work" and warned that "a polemical agenda may well make for a lively discussion, but it also lessens somewhat his ability to give a balanced historical picture". [32] Luke Timothy Johnson, reviewing the same book, described Ehrman as a practitioner of "counter-apologetics" and questioned the handling of resurrection experiences while acknowledging the clarity of the exposition. [33]
Reviewers have also credited specific biblical inerrancy and forgery arguments. Michael J. Kruger wrote in Themelios that Ehrman is "absolutely correct that early Christians simply did not see [pseudonymous writing] this way. To them, forgery was a lie, plain and simple". [34] Academic reviews of the scholarly monograph Forgery and Counterforgery in Novum Testamentum, The Journal of Religion, and The Journal of Theological Studies have discussed the book's scope and definitions of forgery between 100-400AD, praising the documentation while debating the breadth of the term "forgery" and individual case judgments. [35] [36] [37]
Reception of later trade books has been mixed but their accessibility is generally noted. The Washington Independent Review of Books called The Triumph of Christianity "solidly grounded in first-rate scholarship". [38] Kirkus Reviews called the book "accessible and intriguing but not groundbreaking". [39]
Alan Kirk argues that in Jesus Before the Gospels Ehrman cites memory research selectively, ignoring that Frederic Bartlett's experiment discovered that stories take on a stable, "schematic" form rather quickly, and that Ehrman also overemphasizes individual transmission instead of community, making a "lethal oversight" about Jan Vansina, whom he quotes as evidence for corruption in the Jesus tradition, changing his mind, arguing that information was conveyed through a community that placed controls rather than through chains of transmission easily subject to change. Kirk does sympathize with Ehrman that appealing to memory cannot automatically guarantee historicity. [40]
Evangelical scholars Andreas J. Köstenberger, Darrell L. Bock, and Josh D. Chatraw have disputed Ehrman's depiction of scholarly consensus, saying: "It is only by defining scholarship on his own terms and by excluding scholars who disagree with him that Ehrman is able to imply that he is supported by all other scholarship," [41] but Michael R. Licona, scholar and Christian apologist, notes that Ehrman's "positions are those largely embraced by mainstream skeptical scholarship." [42]
Ehrman's popular work has drawn organized rejoinders as well as broad notice. Gary Kamiya wrote that evangelicals "attacked it as exaggerated, unfair and lacking a devotional tone", noting that "no fewer than three books were published in response" to Misquoting Jesus and Jesus, Interrupted . [43] In 2014 Zondervan published a response volume to How Jesus Became God , titled How God Became Jesus, by five scholars who contest aspects of Ehrman's reconstruction on historical and theological grounds. [44]
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