Bart Denton Ehrman (born October 5, 1955) is an American New Testament scholar whose research focuses on the textual criticism of the New Testament, the historical Jesus, and the origins and development of early Christianity. He is the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the author or editor of more than 30 books, including six New York Times bestsellers, and has created nine lecture series with The Great Courses. Ehrman also runs a membership blog whose proceeds support charities that address hunger and homelessness. As of March 2025, the blog had reportedly raised more than $3 million.

Ehrman was born in Lawrence, Kansas, and grew up there. 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.

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 lists a forthcoming book, Love Thy Stranger, to be released on March 24, 2026.

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 received the American Humanist Association's Religious Liberty Award in 2011. He held National Humanities Center fellowships in 2009–10 and 2018–19 for projects on ancient forgery and early Christian afterlife narratives. He has received multiple university teaching awards at UNC, including the Pope Center Spirit of Inquiry Teaching Award and the Undergraduate Students' Teaching Award. He was named a Guggenheim Fellow in 2018 in the field of Religion.

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" 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".