Bart D. Ehrman

Ehrman also runs a membership blog whose proceeds support charities that address hunger and homelessness.

Ehrman studied at Moody Bible Institute, Princeton Theological Seminary and Wheaton College. The recorded working language is English. The field of work recorded is biblical studies. Residence is recorded at Durham. Employment is recorded with University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Distinctions recorded are Emperor Has No Clothes Award and Guggenheim Fellowship.

Ehrman was born in Lawrence, Kansas, and grew up there. While growing up, he was active in the Episcopal Church as an altar server. He studied at Moody Bible Institute, where he completed the institute's three year diploma before transferring credits to Wheaton College. He earned a BA at Wheaton College in 1978, and an MDiv in 1981 and PhD in 1985 at Princeton Theological Seminary, where he studied with textual critic Bruce Metzger. His dissertation on the gospel quotations of Didymus the Blind informed his first scholarly monograph, Didymus the Blind and the Text of the Gospels.

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. He was named James A. Gray Distinguished Professor in 2003. In 2025, he announced that he is planning to retire from UNC at the end of the year. He has recorded multiple courses with The Teaching Company, including series on the New Testament and the historical Jesus. He is the author of widely assigned textbooks, including The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings.

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. A 2020 Time essay summarized key claims in Heaven and Hell for general readers.

Ehrman has said he progressed from evangelical belief to agnosticism, identifying the problem of suffering as decisive for him. He has written, "the problem of suffering became for me the problem of faith" and has said, "I no longer go to church, no longer believe, no longer consider myself a Christian". In a 2008 interview he said, "I simply didn't believe that there was a God of any sort", a view he arrived at starting around 2000. 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. 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". 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". He has also written that Jesus did not teach postmortem reward and punishment as popularly conceived. In a 2020 essay he argued that Jesus proclaimed resurrection and the coming kingdom rather than eternal torment.

Ehrman lives in North Carolina and is married to Sarah Beckwith, an English professor of medieval literature at Duke University.

The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings. New York, Oxford University Press, 1997, 8th ed. 2023. A Brief Introduction to the New Testament. New York, Oxford University Press, multiple eds., 5th ed. 2020. The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction. New York, Oxford University Press, 2013, 2nd ed. 2017. The New Testament and Other Early Christian Writings: A Reader. New York, Oxford University Press, 1998, 2nd ed. 2003. After the New Testament: 100–300 C.E., A Reader in Early Christianity. New York, Oxford University Press, 1999, 2nd ed. 2014. with Andrew S. Jacobs, Christianity in Late Antiquity, 300–450 C.E., A Reader. New York, Oxford University Press, 2004.

with Michael W. Holmes, eds., The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research: Essays on the Status Quaestionis. Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1995, 2nd ed. Leiden, Brill, 2012. Studies in the Textual Criticism of the New Testament. Leiden, Brill, 2006.

A full list appears in his curriculum vitae. The following items are frequently cited in scholarship. "Jesus' Trial Before Pilate: John 18:28–19:16". Religion 13, 1983. "Cephas and Peter". Journal of Biblical Literature 109, 1990, 463–474. "Heracleon, Origen, and the Text of the Fourth Gospel". Vigiliae Christianae 47, 1993, 105–118. "A Leper in the Hands of an Angry Jesus". in Studies in the Textual Criticism of the New Testament. Leiden, Brill, 2006. "The Text of the Gospels at the End of the Second Century". in C.-B. Amphoux and others, eds., Codex Bezae: Studies from the Lunel Colloquium. Turnhout, Brepols, 1996.

The Great Courses video or audio lecture series, 24 or 12 lectures unless noted The Historical Jesus. Lost Christianities: Christian Scriptures and the Battles over Authentication. From Jesus to Constantine: A History of Early Christianity. After the New Testament: The Writings of the Apostolic Fathers. History of the Bible: The Making of the New Testament Canon. The New Testament. The Triumph of Christianity. How Jesus Became God. The Greatest Controversies of Early Christian History. Online short courses and webinars offered on BartEhrman.com Paul and Jesus: The Great Divide. Will You Be Left Behind? A History of the Rapture. Jesus the Secret Messiah. Finding Moses. The Other Virgin Births in Antiquity. The Unknown Gospels. In the Beginning: History, Legend, and Myth in Genesis. Did Jesus Think He Was God? A Closer Look at the Evidence. Did the Resurrection of Jesus Really Happen? debate with Michael Licona, webinar recording. Did the Christmas Story Really Happen? webinar.

with Bruce M. Metzger, The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration, 4th ed., co-editor. New York, Oxford University Press, 2005.

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. His Forgery and Counterforgery analyzes literary deceit and ancient charges of pseudepigraphy in early Christian polemics. 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. Did Jesus Exist? defends the historical existence of Jesus against mythicist claims. Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife and Journeys to Heaven and Hell study ancient afterlife traditions and their reception in early Christianity. Armageddon: What the Bible Really Says about the End examines the Book of Revelation and modern apocalyptic interpretation. Simon & Schuster released Love Thy Stranger on March 24, 2026.

Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium. New York, Oxford University Press, 1999. Truth and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code: A Historian Reveals What We Really Know about Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Constantine. New York, Oxford University Press, 2004. Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew. New York, Oxford University Press, 2003. Lost Scriptures: Books That Did Not Make It into the New Testament. New York, Oxford University Press, 2003. Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why. San Francisco, HarperSanFrancisco, 2005. Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene: The Followers of Jesus in History and Legend. New York, Oxford University Press, 2006. The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot: A New Look at Betrayer and Betrayed. New York, Oxford University Press, 2006. God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question, Why We Suffer. New York, HarperOne, 2008. Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible. New York, HarperOne, 2009. Forged: Writing in the Name of God. New York, HarperOne, 2011. Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth. New York, HarperOne, 2012. Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics. New York, Oxford University Press, 2012. How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee. San Francisco, HarperOne, 2014. Jesus Before the Gospels: How the Earliest Christians Remembered, Changed, and Invented Their Stories of the Savior. New York, HarperOne, 2016. The Triumph of Christianity: How a Forbidden Religion Swept the World. New York, Simon & Schuster, 2018. Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife. New York, Simon & Schuster, 2020. Journeys to Heaven and Hell: Tours of the Afterlife in the Early Christian Tradition. New Haven, Yale University Press, 2022. Armageddon: What the Bible Really Says about the End. New York, Simon & Schuster, 2023. Love Thy Stranger: How the Teachings of Jesus Transformed the Moral Conscience of the West. New York, Simon & Schuster, announced for 2026.

The Apostolic Fathers, Volume I and Volume II, Greek with English translation. Loeb Classical Library 24 and 25. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2003. with Zlatko Pleše, The Apocryphal Gospels: Texts and Translations. New York, Oxford University Press, 2011. with Zlatko Pleše, The Other Gospels: Accounts of Jesus from Outside the New Testament. New York, Oxford University Press, 2014. Didymus the Blind and the Text of the Gospels. Atlanta, Scholars Press for the Society of Biblical Literature, 1986. with Gordon D. Fee and Michael W. Holmes, The Text of the Fourth Gospel in the Writings of Origen, vol. 1. Atlanta, Scholars Press for the Society of Biblical Literature, 1992.