Bart D. Ehrman

Bart D. Ehrman

Bart D. Ehrman (Bart Denton Ehrman) was born on October 5th, 1955 and is currently 70 years old. Bart D. Ehrman was born in Lawrence, KS, USA. Ehrman attended Wheaton College where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree and Princeton Theological Seminary where he received an MDiv and a PhD.

Bart D. Ehrman is a New Testament scholar who focuses on textual criticism of the historical Jesus, the New Testament, and the origins and development of early Christianity. He is the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

He’s written and edited dozens of books, including some college textbooks, and written some New York Times bestsellers. Bart’s books have sold over 2 million copies and have been translated into 27 languages.

He started studying the Bible, biblical languages, and biblical theology at Moody Bible Institute, where in 1976, he earned the school’s three year diploma.

Bart was raised in the Episcopal Church; as a teen, he became a born-again evangelical. In one of his books, he recounts being certain in his youthful enthusiasm that God inspired the wording of the Bible and protected its texts from any errors.

Bart’s personal desire to better understand the original words of the Bible led him to study the ancient languages, especially Koine Greek, and textual criticism. During these studies at Princeton, he became convinced that there were contradictions and discrepancies in the biblical manuscripts that couldn’t be reconciled or harmonized.

In the preface to another of his books, he stated that he’s been scared of going to hell ever since he was a child and, once he started encountering doubts about his Christian beliefs at college, panicked that he might die before finding the right beliefs and get sent to Hell.

Subsequently, he turned into a liberal Christian, remaining in the Episcopal Church for 15 years, however became an agnostic atheist after he struggled with the philosophical issues of evil and suffering.

Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why. The New Testament manuscripts, for almost 1,500 years, were all copied by hand, and mistakes and intentional changes abound in the competing manuscript versions. Bart makes the provocative case which many of our widely held beliefs concerning the divinity of Jesus, the Trinity, and the divine origins of the Bible itself are results of both accidental and intentional alterations by scribes.

In a fascinating and compelling book, Bart illustrates why and where changes were made in our earliest surviving manuscripts, explaining for the very first time just how the numerous variations of our cherished biblical stories came to be, and why just certain versions of the stories qualify for publication in the Bibles that we read today. Bart frames his account with personal reflections on how his study of the Greek manuscripts made him abandon his once ultra-conservative views on the Bible.

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Bart D. Ehrman: F.A.Q