*Slides were provided for free to all listeners!

Ehrman gave his lecture today on the existence of Jesus on earth in history contra mythicism, so here are a few of the new takeaways you may not have heard before.

So what’s kind of new here is pointing to 1 Thessalonians 2:14-16 implicating the Jews in the death of Christ. Obviously if the Jews killed Christ then Christ existed on earth. This issue came up in last year’s NINT conference (I believe with Benjamin White) that different Jewish groups were always infighting (as we know from the Dead Sea Scrolls) and so it’s not odd that Paul, conversing with pagans, would blame some Jews for killing Christ – and these same Jews also persecuted Paul (1 Thess 1).

Another new line of argument is that Jesus “ministered” to the Jews:

The usual translation here is “servant,” not “minister” although some translations have “minister” like the KJV.

Ehrman’s thoughts on Hebrews are interesting:

Verses 1:6 and 12:2 seem particularly relevant since oikoumene seems to suggest Jesus entered our world, and shame before the world on the cross seems to make more sense than shame before sky demons.

One point that Ehrman spent a lot of time on with Carrier was trying to refute Carrier’s analysis regarding James the Brother of the Lord:

I asked about this in the Q and A because Carrier does not mean “Brother of the Lord” means Christian, but rather “Non apostle Baptized Christian.” I had to go to dinner though, so I didn’t hear if Ehrman responded to my question or not.