Department of Philosophy Hosts Distinguished Professor Bart Ehrman

Bart Ehrman, one of the world’s leading authorities on the Bible, will speak at Kent State University on Thursday, Jan. 20, at 7 p.m. in the Kent Student Center Kiva. Ehrman’s speech is called “Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don’t Know About Them),” which is also the title of his latest book. Ehrman is a distinguished professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and author of more than 20 books. He is a leading authority on the New Testament and the history of early Christianity.

A reception and book signing will follow Ehrman’s lecture in room 204 of the Kent Student Center, and copies of his most recent books will be available for purchase at the reception. The events are free and open to the public. Ehrman’s appearance at Kent State is sponsored by the university’s Religious Studies Program; departments of Philosophy, History, Modern and Classical Language Studies, and English; and the College of Arts and Sciences.

Ehrman is the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He came to UNC in 1988 after four years of teaching at Rutgers University. At UNC, he has served as both the director of Graduate Studies and the chair of the Department of Religious Studies.

A graduate of Wheaton College in Illinois, Ehrman received both is Masters of Divinity and doctorate from Princeton Theological Seminary, where his 1985 doctoral dissertation was awarded magna cum laude.

Among his most recent books are a Greek-English edition of the Apostolic Fathers of the Loeb Classical Library, an assessment of the Gospel of Judas and three New York Times Bestsellers: “Jesus, Interrupted,” an account of scholarly views of the New Testament; “God’s Problem,” an assessment of the biblical views of suffering; and “Misquoting Jesus,” an overview of the changes found in the surviving copies of the New Testament and of the scribes who produced them. His books have been translated into 27 languages.

Ehrman’s fields of scholarly expertise are the historical Jesus, the early Christian apocrypha, the apostolic fathers and the manuscript tradition of the New Testament.

For more information on the lecture, contact Dr. David Odell-Scott, professor and chair of Kent State’s Department of Philosophy and coordinator of Religious Studies, at 330-672-2315 or dodellsc@kent.edu.

For information about Kent State’s Department of Philosophy, visit www.kent.edu/cas/philosophy.

# # #

Media Contacts:
David Odell-Scott, dodellsc@kent.edu, 330-672-2315
Emily Vincent, evincen2@kent.edu, 330-672-8595