Ehrman was born inLawrence, Kansas, and grew up there.[1] He studied atMoody Bible Institute, where he completed the institute's three year diploma before transferring credits toWheaton College.[8] He earned a BA at Wheaton College in 1978, and an MDiv in 1981 and PhD in 1985 atPrinceton Theological Seminary, where he studied with textual criticBruce Metzger.[1] His dissertation on the gospel quotations ofDidymus the Blind informed his first scholarly monograph,Didymus the Blind and the Text of the Gospels.[9]
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.[1] He was named James A. Gray Distinguished Professor in 2003.[1] 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, includingThe New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings.[11]
Much of Ehrman's early scholarship addressed the Greek manuscript tradition of the New Testament and the ways theological controversy shaped textual transmission. HisThe Orthodox Corruption of Scripture argues that some scribal changes reflect early Christological debates.[12] HisForgery 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 andJourneys 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 theBook of Revelation and modern apocalyptic interpretation.[18] Simon & Schuster lists a forthcoming book,Love Thy Stranger, to be released on March 24, 2026.[19]
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 2020Time essay summarized key claims inHeaven and Hell for general readers.[20]
Ehrman received theAmerican Humanist Association's Religious Liberty Award in 2011.[3] He heldNational Humanities Center fellowships in 2009–10 and 2018–19 for projects on ancient forgery and early Christian afterlife narratives.[4] He has received multiple university teaching awards at UNC, including the Pope Center Spirit of Inquiry Teaching Award and the Undergraduate Students' Teaching Award.[1] He was named aGuggenheim Fellow in 2018 in the field of Religion.[21]
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 summarizingHow 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 proclaimedresurrection and thecoming kingdom rather than eternal torment.[30]
Scholars have assessed Ehrman's trade books as effective popularization and as polemical in tone.Daniel B. Wallace's review ofMisquoting Jesus in theJournal 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 judgedHow 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 specificbiblical inerrancy and forgery arguments. Michael J. Kruger wrote inThemelios 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 monographForgery and Counterforgery inNovum Testamentum,The Journal of Religion, andThe 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. TheWashington Independent Review of Books calledThe 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 inJesus Before the Gospels Ehrman cites memory research selectively, ignoring thatFrederic 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" aboutJan 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 scholarsAndreas 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] butMichael 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" toMisquoting Jesus andJesus, Interrupted.[43] In 2014 Zondervan published a response volume toHow Jesus Became God, titledHow God Became Jesus, by five scholars who contest aspects of Ehrman's reconstruction on historical and theological grounds.[44]
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.[46]
Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew. New York, Oxford University Press, 2003.[47]
Lost Scriptures: Books That Did Not Make It into the New Testament. New York, Oxford University Press, 2003.[48]
Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why. San Francisco, HarperSanFrancisco, 2005.[49]
Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene: The Followers of Jesus in History and Legend. New York, Oxford University Press, 2006.[50]
The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot: A New Look at Betrayer and Betrayed. New York, Oxford University Press, 2006.[51]
God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question, Why We Suffer. New York, HarperOne, 2008.[52]
Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible. New York, HarperOne, 2009.[53]
Forged: Writing in the Name of God. New York, HarperOne, 2011.[54]
The Apostolic Fathers, Volume I and Volume II, Greek with English translation. Loeb Classical Library 24 and 25. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2003.[70][71]
with Zlatko Pleše,The Apocryphal Gospels: Texts and Translations. New York, Oxford University Press, 2011.[72]
with Zlatko Pleše,The Other Gospels: Accounts of Jesus from Outside the New Testament. New York, Oxford University Press, 2014.[73]
Didymus the Blind and the Text of the Gospels. Atlanta, Scholars Press for the Society of Biblical Literature, 1986.[74]
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.[75]
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.[76][77]
Studies in the Textual Criticism of the New Testament. Leiden, Brill, 2006.[78]
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.[79]
"Cephas and Peter".Journal of Biblical Literature 109, 1990, 463–474.[80]
"Heracleon, Origen, and the Text of the Fourth Gospel".Vigiliae Christianae 47, 1993, 105–118.[81]
"A Leper in the Hands of an Angry Jesus". inStudies in the Textual Criticism of the New Testament. Leiden, Brill, 2006.[82]
"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.[83]
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.[103]
The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament. Oxford University Press, US. 2011 [1993].ISBN978-0-19-973978-3.
The Apostolic Fathers: Volume II. Epistle of Barnabas. Papias and Quadratus. Epistle to Diognetus. The Shepherd of Hermas.Harvard University Press. 2003.ISBN0-674-99608-9.
Metzger, Bruce M.; Ehrman, Bart (2005).The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration. Oxford University Press, US.ISBN0-19-516667-1.
Jesus Before the Gospels: How the Earliest Christians Remembered, Changed, and Invented Their Stories of the Savior.HarperOne, US. 2016.ISBN978-0062285201.
^Kirk, Alan (2017). "Ehrman, Bauckham and Bird on Memory and the Jesus Tradition".Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus.15 (1):88–114.doi:10.1163/17455197-01501004.
