A one-day symposium, streamed live worldwide, where eight leading scholars tackle the biggest questions about how the Bible came to be, capped by a live closing debate on whether the Gospels are based on eyewitness testimony.
Register for eventStreamed live worldwide, on the Saturday of SBL.
The Biblical Studies Symposium is a one-day gathering of working biblical scholars, streamed live worldwide. Three paired sessions place a Hebrew Bible specialist alongside a New Testament specialist on the same question, each with thirty minutes of moderated discussion and live audience Q&A.
The day closes with a live debate featuring Bart Ehrman and Michael Bird of Ridley College on whether the Gospels are based on eyewitness testimony, one of the oldest and most-debated questions in New Testament scholarship.
Every session ends with thirty minutes of live, moderated Q&A, so you're not just watching; you're putting your questions to the scholars in real time. And every ticket includes lifetime access to the recordings, to revisit whenever you like.
“To read these texts well is to take seriously that someone, somewhere, two thousand years ago, thought they were worth dying for.” From the program notes
Most online Bible events are passive webinars: a talking head, and a chat box you never really use.
The Biblical Studies Symposium is built to be genuinely interactive. Every session has live, moderated Q&A where your questions reach the scholars in real time, and the day ends with a real debate.
It's one of the oldest and most-debated questions in New Testament scholarship, and the answer shapes how the Gospels are read. Two top scholars take it up directly, on a single stage, with audience Q&A.
YesThe Gospels preserve eyewitness recollection of the historical Jesus.
Dr. Michael F. Bird is Deputy Principal and Lecturer in Theology and New Testament at Ridley College in Melbourne, Australia. He is an ordained Anglican priest and the author of over thirty books, including the award-winning The Gospel of the Lord: How the Early Church Wrote the Story of Jesus (Eerdmans) and (with N.T. Wright) The New Testament in its World (SPCK/Zondervan).
He co-hosts the Ask N.T. Wright Anything podcast and runs the Early Christian History and AI for Academics YouTube channels.
NoThe Gospels are anonymous narratives shaped by decades of oral tradition.
Bart D. Ehrman is the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he taught from 1988 until his retirement in 2025. Recognized internationally for his scholarship on the New Testament and early Christianity, Professor Ehrman has written or edited thirty-three books, including six New York Times bestsellers. His college-level textbook The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings has remained the best-selling text in the field for more than twenty-five years. His scholarly works have been published by Oxford, Harvard, Yale, and other premier academic presses, and his books have been translated into twenty-seven languages, reaching millions of readers worldwide.
Beyond the classroom, Professor Ehrman is a widely recognized public scholar. He has produced nine acclaimed courses for The Great Courses, in addition to numerous online courses available through BartEhrman.com. His books and courses have sold more than two million copies.
He also writes for his charitable blog, The Bart Ehrman Blog, which has raised millions for organizations addressing poverty, homelessness, and hunger. In addition, he hosts the weekly podcast Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman, available on YouTube and all major podcast platforms, where he brings cutting-edge biblical scholarship to a global audience.
Chris is a scholar of early Christianity with a PhD from the University of Toronto. His research focused on how religion spread across ancient Mediterranean diasporas, from papyri to inscriptions to the social networks behind the earliest Christ groups. After years in policy work and consulting, he returned to his first love: making serious scholarship accessible to people who weren't trained to read it but were born to love it.
A deliberate arc from morning coffee to late dinner. Subject to refinement, but not to dilution.
A half-hour to settle in before the day begins.
Bart Ehrman.
Two 40-minute talks & thirty minutes of moderated discussion and audience Q&A.
View talks & Q&AShawna Dolansky · Carleton University
John S. Kloppenborg · University of Toronto
Dolansky and Kloppenborg in dialogue.
A short pause between sessions.
Two 40-minute talks & thirty minutes of moderated discussion and audience Q&A.
View talks & Q&ASidnie Crawford · University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Elizabeth Schrader Polczer · Villanova University
Schrader Polczer and Crawford in dialogue.
A full sit-down meal, included with every ticket.
Two 40-minute talks & thirty minutes of moderated discussion and audience Q&A.
View talks & Q&AJoel S. Baden · Yale Divinity School
Mark Goodacre · Duke University
Baden and Goodacre in dialogue.
The day's last pause before the closing debate.
Bart Ehrman & Michael Bird. Opening statements, rebuttals, and audience Q&A, on the record.
View debate formatBart Ehrman & Michael Bird lay out their positions.
The room opens its questions to the floor, moderated, on the record.
A short send-off before the room empties for the evening.
The full livestream, plus a private post-event meet-up with the scholars.
Watch the entire day live from anywhere in the world.
Cancel up to thirty days before the event and we'll refund every dollar, no questions asked. If you attend and find the day didn't deliver what we promised, write us. We'll listen, and we'll refund you. We mean it. The point of the symposium is the quality of the day, not the booking.
BSS is built around three things most online Bible events don't deliver: paired sessions that build a real argument across the day; live discussion and audience Q&A with the scholars in every session; and a closing debate that puts it all to the test.
It's serious scholarship, designed for intelligent non-specialists, streamed live to you anywhere in the world.
No. We plan to hold NINT as a separate virtual event. This year's theme is the Apocrypha and the formation of the New Testament canon.
Both, and everyone in between. No academic background is required. The presentations are designed for an intelligent lay audience: believers, skeptics, and seekers all welcome. The scholarship is accessible without being thinned out.
Yes. Every session ends with thirty minutes of live, moderated audience Q&A, so you can put your questions straight to the scholars in real time. That live back-and-forth is the whole point.
Yes. Every pass includes lifetime access to the event recordings, so you can rewatch any session, any time.
The Virtual Livestream ($119) includes:
VIP Virtual ($149) adds an exclusive, members-only post-event virtual meet-up with the scholars.
The whole symposium is streamed live online, worldwide. You'll receive your access link and joining details by email before the event, and the recordings stay in your account afterward.
Opening remarks begin at 9:00 AM Mountain Time, and the day runs to about 6:00 PM, with the closing debate from 3:55 to 5:45 PM. Full timings come with your registration email.
Full refund up to thirty days before the event. Within thirty days, tickets are non-refundable but fully transferable; you can pass your seat to a friend or colleague. If something genuinely unavoidable comes up, write us; we'll do our best to make it right.
Early-bird pricing is in effect now; the listed strikethrough prices are the going rates once early-bird closes. There is no separate student discount for this event. Sorry.
All major credit and debit cards, plus Apple Pay and Google Pay through our secure checkout.
Registration is open now. Join us live from anywhere in the world.
