---
title: "Bart Ehrman's Main Arguments: quarantine"
description: "Sayings attributed to Bart Ehrman that the article does not use: the wording as it circulates, where it is said to come from, what was tried, what was found, and what would change the verdict."
author: "AI (Claude Opus 5.5, high thinking)"
theme: common/themes/berean2/theme.php
status: draft
published: "2026-10"
---
# Quarantine: the attributions not used
Rejecting a quotation from publication and erasing it from the record are two different decisions. This page is the record.
## What this page is
Ehrman is quoted constantly, on both sides, and many of the quotations come from talks, interviews and debates that are hard to check. This page lists those found in the project's notes and in circulation that the article does not use, and why. Nothing here was established with a summarising web tool; sources were read from downloaded bytes or archive.org search-inside paragraphs.
Status words:
1. **UNVERIFIED:** no route to the named source was found this round. This says nothing about whether Ehrman said it.
2. **NOT HIS VERDICT:** the words are real but are not Ehrman's own conclusion.
3. **RECOVERED:** a later check found the source.
4. **SUPERSEDED:** the words are real or likely but Ehrman has since changed his view, and he says so.
5. **CHARACTERISATION:** a description of Ehrman by someone else, not a quotation.
## Entries
1. **"The bottom line, I think which is one we haven't even talked about is whether there can be such a thing as historical evidence for a miracle. And I think the answer is a clear no. I think all historians agree with me on that."** Claimed source: a dialogue with Michael Licona, at 50:54, on a ge.tt file link (Eric's notes, `nature of miracles.txt` and `christianity.txt`). Tried: the link in the notes is dead; no transcript located. Status: UNVERIFIED. The article states his position from his books instead (Part 8). Would change: a recording or transcript of the dialogue.
2. **The exchange about Christians in the Society of Biblical Literature ("Virtually everyone there is a Christian" and following).** Claimed source: the same Licona dialogue. Status: UNVERIFIED, and outside the article's subject.
3. **"We also have solid traditions to indicate that women found this tomb empty three days later. This is attested in all of our gospel sources, early and late, and so it appears to be a historical datum."** Claimed source: *From Jesus to Constantine*, lecture 4 (Teaching Company, 2003, audio). Tried: no copy of the audio or guidebook located; the notes themselves say "can't find a source." Status: UNVERIFIED and, if accurate, SUPERSEDED: in 2014 Ehrman wrote that he no longer thinks the burial and empty tomb "relatively certain" (*How Jesus Became God* p. 7, verified). Would change: the lecture audio or its printed guidebook.
4. **"One of the most certain facts of history is that Jesus was crucified on orders of the Roman prefect of Judea, Pontius Pilate."** Claimed source: *The Historical Jesus* (Teaching Company course guidebook, 2000), p. 162. Tried: not found on archive.org; no other copy. Status: UNVERIFIED. The article does not need it; his verified 1999 and 2012 statements make the same point.
5. **"there is no doubt that [Paul] believed that he saw Jesus' real but glorified body raised from the dead."** Claimed source: "Bart Ehrman (2008)," marked unverified in the notes. Status: RECOVERED. It is in *The New Testament: A Historical Introduction*, 4th ed. (2008), p. 301 (archive.org search-inside, leaf 339, page from the scan's map), where it reads "there is no doubt that he believed that he saw Jesus’ real but glorified body raised from the dead." The bracketed "[Paul]" is the notes' substitution for "he". The article quotes it in Part 1.
6. **"Paul himself converted to be a follower of Jesus within a year or two at the latest of Jesus' death".** Claimed source: an interview at religiondispatches.org. Tried: the address in the notes was not retrieved this round. Status: UNVERIFIED. Interview wording also mixes the interviewer's framing with his answers.
7. **"I finally yielded. These Gospels do indeed think of Jesus as divine ... So yes, now I agree that Jesus is portrayed as a divine being, a God-man, in all the Gospels."** Claimed source: Ehrman's blog, 13 April 2014. Tried: the post's public HTML (saved in the library) ends at John 17:5; the rest is for members only, and Wayback captures have the same cut. Status: UNVERIFIED beyond the public opening, which the article quotes. Would change: a member's copy of the full post.
8. **"The assertion that Jesus is God is arguably the single most important development in Western civilization."** Claimed source: a Religion News Service article (2014) about the publisher's marketing of *How Jesus Became God*. Status: UNVERIFIED; it may be publisher copy rather than Ehrman's own wording. Not used.
9. **"I agree Jesus predicted the destruction of Jerusalem and that was written down before 70."** Claimed source: Ehrman-Williams debate, *Unbelievable?*, 2019, at about 19:00 (Eric's note `ehrman.txt`; this is the note's paraphrase, not a transcript). Tried: yt-dlp confirmed the video's title and date (25 October 2019) and then returned HTTP 429 for the automatic captions; not retried in a loop. Status: UNVERIFIED. Would change: the captions or audio at that point.
10. **"Why was the tomb supposedly empty? I say supposedly because, frankly, I don't know that it was. Our very first reference to Jesus' tomb being empty is in the Gospel of Mark, written forty years later by someone living in a different country who had heard that it was empty. How would he know?"** Claimed source: none given in the notes. The Empty Tomb article also records this as unlocated. Status: UNVERIFIED.
11. **"Ehrman agrees that alternate explanations are very unlikely, but something else must be true due to his presupposition to materialistic naturalism".** Source: Eric's own notes and forum posts. Status: CHARACTERISATION, and contrary to Ehrman's printed statement that the historian's limit "is not that historians are required to be secular humanists with an anti-supernaturalist bias" (*How Jesus Became God* p. 143, verified). The article does not attribute motives (Part 1).
12. **The "telephone game" exchange with Daniel Wallace ("No, I wouldn't.").** Claimed source: Ehrman-Wallace debate video at 1:47:07. Status: UNVERIFIED (not fetched this round). It would support the article's point that Ehrman does not claim wholesale corruption, which his books already show.
13. **"It's the same problem you have for all of the books of the ancient world" and "I don't know any serious historian that doubts the existence of Jesus."** Claimed source: *The Infidel Guy Show*, 2009 (YouTube). Status: UNVERIFIED. The verified 2009 White debate and 2012 Huffington Post essay make the same points.
14. **"It turns out that Jesus was wrong."** Source: *Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet* p. 127 (verified). Status: NOT HIS VERDICT when quoted alone. It closes his summary of Albert Schweitzer's view; the next paragraph says no one accepts Schweitzer's particular reconstruction. The article quotes it with that context.
15. **"Ginormous doesn't cover it" and the "Yes" to Peter Williams's suggestion.** Source: the White debate transcript (verified against the transcript PDF, not against audio). Status: used in the article and labelled as oral. Listed here only because the transcript was produced by White's ministry; an audio check would close it.