Michael Kruger on Bart Ehrman

Great insight into Dr. Bart Ehrman,

In the end, Jesus Interrupted can be best summarized as a book filled with ironies.  Ironic that it purports to be about unbiased history but rarely presents an opposing viewpoint; ironic that it claims to follow the scholarly consensus but breaks from it so often; ironic that it insists on the historical-critical method but then reads the gospels with a modernist, overly-literal hermeneutic; ironic that it claims no one view of early Christianity could be “right” (Walter Bauer) but then proceeds to tell us which view of early Christianity is “right;” ironic that it dismisses Papias with a wave of the hand but presents the Gospel of the Ebionites as if it were equal to the canonical four; and ironic that it declares everyone can “pick and choose” what is right for them, but then offers its own litany of moral absolutes.  Such intellectual schizophrenia suggests there is more going on in Jesus Interrupted than meets the eye.  Though veiled in the garb of scholarship, this book is religious at the core.  Ehrman does not so much offer history as he does theology, not so much academics as he does his own ideology. The reader does not get a post-religious Ehrman as expected, but simply gets a new-religious Ehrman–an author who has traded in one religious system (Christianity) for another (postmodern agnosticism).  Thus, Ehrman is not out to squash religion as so many might suppose.  He is simply out to promote his own.  He is preacher turned scholar turned preacher.  And of all the ironies, perhaps that is the greatest.

From: http://www.reformation21.org/shelf-life/jesus-interrupted.php

The Jesus Dynasty

I picked up The Jesus Dynasty because as I thumbed through it I saw a very good explanation of why Jesus may have been put to death on a Thursday rather than Friday.  As I read the book I didn’t find other proofs which were as convincing as Dr. James Tabor’s work on Jesus’ burial day.

Dr. Tabor does not like Luke even though Luke based on his own words set out to create one of the best documents on very early church history in The Acts of the Apostles.  Luke’s initial statement in his gospel reads:

“Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of  the word have delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.”

I bring up the Acts of the Apostles because Dr. Tabor references Acts 22 at the beginning of Chapter 16 and states that Luke quoting the Apostle Paul in a speech where he states he was “born in Tarsus” must be wrong based on Jerome’s account (4^th century) which states that Paul was born in Gischala in Galilee.   My first question about his analysis is:  why would you trust a 4^th century writer when the companion of Paul, Luke, is quoting Paul as he speaks in Acts 22 and states that he was born in Tarsus?  It seems that his is not using the standard principles of discovery.  Secondly, does Jerome actually state in his writings that Paul was born in Tarsus?  The best answer I can gather from research is “No.”  Jerome does not say that Paul was born in Tarsus.  He states that Paul grew up in Tarsus.  So, there really is not a conflict or “one’s right and the other is wrong” situation here though Dr. Tabor plainly states that there is a contradiction between Jerome and Luke.   I believe he has an agenda in accepting Jerome over Luke.

Luke records in the Acts of the Apostles several encounters between Paul and the other Apostles (disciples of Jesus) where it is stated that the other Apostles examined Paul and his teachings at Paul’s request to ensure that his understanding aligns with history and their views of Jesus and His message.  Remember that the Apostles were eye witnesses of the life and teachings of Jesus. If Dr. Tabor accepts Luke’s accounts at face value, then he has no bases for saying that Paul created the Christianity that we have today and that it is a radical departure from the message that Jesus and/or the other Apostles taught. If one does a careful analysis of Paul’s writings and those of Jesus, we do not find the contrasts or contradictions which many assert.

Lastly, Dr. Tabor appears to be a more credible archeologist than those men who wrote the Family Tomb of Jesus.   For that reason I do not understand his references to the Talpiot tomb nor do I understand its significance to The Jesus Dynasty.   Though the authors of the Family Tomb of Jesus attempt to associate an ossuary bearing the name of James to the Talpiot tomb, they did not do that in a first attempt.  The Family Tomb work was a “bomb.”  Dr. Tabor would be well advised to only reference credible research and archaeology.

Who Wrote the Bible?

I moved on to the chapter, “Who Wrote the Bible?”   That is a misnamed.  He only deals with New Testament books.   I thought that I might glean real meat here but I got to his conclusion and was very disappointed.   He makes points about books not being written by the names ascribed to them and at the end answers his own dilemma.

Ehrman makes a big deal about the disciples being illiterate by quoting some statistics about literacy rates in Israel during this era.  These men were from Galilee and were less apt to be trained or literate than if from other parts of Israel.  After running down this trail, he poses what I am sure he considers to be a profound proposition that these men couldn’t write so why are so many of the books in the New Testament attributed to them.  Well, actually there are not many books or letters attributed to the disciples of Jesus.

More importantly, however, is Dr. Ehrman’s own discovery and admission at the end of the chapter.  On page 155, speaking of I Peter: “It is sometimes argued that Peter had someone else write the letter for him, for example, Silvanus, who is named in the letter (5:12).  But the letter itself doesn’t say that. And if someone else wrote the letter, wouldn’t he, rather than Peter, be the real author?”

Do you get what Dr Ehrman is alluding to here?   He has just called some of the New Testament books forgeries because someone dictated a letter and someone else wrote the letter on parchment—and, this is the presumption throughout the chapter on who “wrote” to books.  I am astounded at his logic.

My wife is a secretary and she types dictation every day she works for her boss.  Do you think she signs that dictation with her name.  No, the boss signs the letters and then they are mailed or faxed.

So, Dr. Ehrman’s premise here explains his own dilemma about the disciples not being able to write Greek, if in fact they were not able to write Greek.  They could have easily dictated the books or letters and had a learned person write it down.  It is not a forgery to put the name of the person on the letter who dictated it.

We have an example of this scenario in Paul’s case.  Galatians was almost certainly dictated to someone else except for chapter 6, verse 11 and maybe 12 where Paul indicates that he is now writing in “large letters”.  So Paul authored Galatians though someone else may have written it down for him when perhaps his sight was failing.

Ehrman does not give one specific example of why the attributed authors did not write the books that are attributed to them. He only speaks in generalities about use of different words and styles of writing.  Now I will concede to him Hebrews. I realize there is still debate in scholarly circles of whether the Apostle Paul wrote the book.  But he never discusses the point that even if the author of a book is not known precisely, that there is merit to trusting it’s inclusion in the set of divinely inspired works.  The early church fathers knew who the authors were and they made the choices within the Christian community who were reading and listening to the Gospels and letters.  Also I believe they all were aided by God’s guidance.

This is not something that anyone today can go back and redo and make the included books a different set of letters and gospels.  Many do not realize that specific principles  guided the early church community in their understanding of which writings were inspired by God and which ones were not inspired.

(Jesus Interrupted)

Contradictions or Apparent Contradictions

I moved back to the front of the book, Jesus Interrupted to the chapter,  A World of Contradictions.  I note here that Ehrman begins to set up “straw men” in an attempt to create contradictions.   A scholar rightly treating these texts would at least start out referring to them as apparent contradictions because they may be that but they are not “absolutely” known to be contradictions.  However, the “contradiction” comes because of the timelines artificially created by Dr. Ehrman and because he does not want to give the gospel writers: Matthew, Mark Luke, and John the liberty to include or exclude what they want to emphasize about the life of Christ.  Matthew, Mark, Luke and John just simply don’t “agree” to his satisfaction because they are providing salient points adapted for the original audience of each writer.

Ehrman states several times throughout the book that to make sense of the gospels we have to take what is given and create our own version of the Gospel.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.  Most of what we need to know is right there in the texts.  He may have trouble, as anyone would, because we are 20^th century readers reading 1^st century authors and many times we don’t understand the nuances of their 1^st century culture and customs.

I need to note that in his hurriedness Dr. Ehrman has the wrong reference of a genealogy on page 37.  He lists Luke 1:23 when in fact the genealogy starts in Luke 3:23.  That points to another issue with the book.  This book appears to be a hurriedly put together document and there is no index here.

Dr. Ehrman covers the events leading to Jesus’ death recorded in Mark and John.  He appears to nail an irreconcilable difference in timing of the death but actually makes a unconvincing case.   I would love to refer him to someone who is probably his friend, Dr. James Tabor, right there in North Carolina where Dr. Ehrman lives.  Dr. Tabor has done his own research and has a very plausible explanation and reconciliation of these accounts in his book The Jesus Dynasty starting on page 198.

In this chapter I noted that Ehrman calls all the points he makes about discrepancies, “minor, irreconcilable differences.” (page 41)  My conclusion here is that though the chapter is called “A World of Contradictions,” none of the apparent ones are dealt with in depth nor convincingly.  The minor points he is able to find don’t cast dispersions on the great themes of the text nor the plot.

The reader must always remember that Dr. Ehrman is speaking about copies of the autographs and not the autographs themselves.  The discipline of textual criticism allows scholars to recreate the original words of the autographs with a high degree of invariability from the copies containing variances in spellings, side notes, omissions and additions.

 

Who Invented Christianity?

That is a question that Christians answer in a very different way than someone like Dr. Ehrman.   I am reading and reviewing the book by Dr. Bart Ehrman, Jesus Interrupted.

I don’t always read a book straight through because in many books there is much paper giving little information that I want to read.  I move to what I hoped would be an interesting chapter:  Who Invented Christianity? Ehrman starts the chapter with an interesting proposition to Christians:  Why don’t they read their book?   That is a great question—we deserve to have to answer that question seriously and often.

However, overall,  this a very lackluster chapter.  There is nothing new, different, or interesting in this chapter—old arguments many writers have delivered before.  It is a sleeper of a chapter.

“When did Jesus become the Son of God?” is a question that Ehrman asks but I am not sure why he even wants to bring the subject up because we know he does not believe that Jesus is the Son of God.  Christians who know the Bible know that Jesus did not become the Son of God. Dr Ehrman disappoints in this chapter because he showed his lack of understand of the texts, of God, and of Christianity in general.

Dr. Ehrman does assume here that the historical Jewish view (though we know there were variations in Jewish views) was that the Messiah was to be a conquering king.  We can deduce that the reason that they had this view is because they listened to teachers who had this view and who did not integrate key passages of the Jewish Bible into a  theology of the Messiah.   This would explain why many Jews totally missed Jesus as their Messiah.  For all the other reasons, read the New Testament.

Historical Assault on Faith or Contemporary Eclipse of Historical Text

 

I am reading the first chapter of the book, A Historical Assault on Faith, and reading issue after issue with the text of either the Hebrew or the Greek and then Dr. Ehrman goes into the plagues in Exodus and list a couple of references.  I decide to pick up a reputable translation of the Hebrew and look up those references: Exodus 9:5 and Exodus 9:21-22 (page 10 in the book).  Oh no,  those texts don’t say anything close to what Ehrman just stated that they say and that is the first thing I have checked.  He totally distorted the texts and said verse 21-22 talk about livestock present when all the livestock in Egypt has been destroyed in Exodus 9:5.  The problem is that 9:5 did not say that all the livestock were destroyed.  Verse 5 makes the point that the Israeli livestock were spared in spite of the plague coming upon the Egyptian livestock.  This is not a matter of knowing the Hebrew—it is very clear what is said here about livestock.  I am going to have to scrutinize Dr. Ehrman much closer as I go through the rest of this book!!

In this first chapter he also gets right to a hot topic for textual critics and complainers against the Gospels:  the accounts of the events immediately following the Resurrection of the body of Jesus Christ.  I will concede to him that these accounts, on the surface, appear to contradict each other but he simply concludes that they are contradictory accounts and does not explore the possible harmonizing of these accounts.  That is what they are, differing accounts,  and the variances make one big statement about the authors of the gospels—there was absolutely no collusion or conspiracy in the writing of these Gospels.  They were written by 4 different men for different audiences.  They stand on their own because they are historic, truthful and accurate.  There is something important that Dr. Ehrman missed here.  If you read any one of these accounts you will see that women were the first to discover that the tomb was empty.  Given the status of women in the Jewish culture at that time, if the disciples were fudging these accounts, they would have never stated that women were the first to discover the empty tomb.  In that culture, this was an embarrassment and would have been covered up if these men were not telling the truth.

It’s important to note that because these post resurrection accounts are told by at least 3 of the Gospel writers, the accounts have been reconciled by many scholars who have studied them in great detail.

(Dr. Ehrman fails is to inform his readers that many scholars studying these resurrection passages have reconciled the accounts of the events immediately following the bodily resurrection of the Christ.)

Bart Interrupted Jesus — life of Bart Ehrman

I picked up the book, Jesus Interrupted, because I saw the video on Amazon and because there was so much hoop-la about Misquoting Jesus, an earlier book by Dr. Bart Ehrman.

The book, Jesus Interrupted, is very revealing about the life of Bart Ehrman.   I believe I see into his heart somewhat.  No one can ever know what goes on in someone’s heart, but the way he speaks of his past is telling.

He says he has a “born again” experience in high school on the first page of the book.  He puts quotes around born again.  What does he mean by the quotes?—that it was pseudo and not real.   That could explain everything about the rest of his life.   In fact, I believe as he probably does believe that it was pseudo, that is, that it never happened.  He never was born again as Jesus explains the concept to Nicodemus in John 3.  I have what I believe is telling evidence of his belief about his own history and what I now believe about his history.  As he reveals his story throughout the book (check this)  he never says that he put his faith in Jesus.  He DOES say that he put his faith in the Bible (e.g., page xi, top), as the inspired, infallible and inerrant word of God.   It is this book that he pursued in his life and ultimately in his career and not the person of the book—Jesus.

A person who has been in evangelical circles knows that for someone who personally knows Jesus, they, very often, speak of Him by His first name.  I don’t see Dr. Ehrman doing that here.   Again, this is very subjective, of course, but it may point to the fact that he had an emotional experience-a pseudo born again experience, like so many other people in this world, and did not meet the real person.  Jesus knew of that type of person and said that they would be around.  See the Gospel of Mark, chapter 4 and the Gospel of John, chapter 6.

Misquoting Jesus…Horsefeathers

I have read a review Bart Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus, by Robert H. Gundry 2 times and got a kick out of it both times so I thought I would share it here.

[ Post-Mortem
Death by hardening of the categories.
Robert H. Gundry | posted 9/01/2006 by Christianity Today]

The first thing to say about Bart Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus is that it has little to do with misquoting Jesus.

I agree with Gundry if only based on my definition of inerrancy which is very different from Ehrman’s apparent definition.  In fact, I would venture that the masses of Christiandom do not have a good grasp on a definition of inerrancy that aligns with the way the Greek books of the new testament were written down. But this is not about inerrancy per se, this is about Gundry’s assessment.

I love Gundry’s succinct summary or take on the work of Ehrman.

As an introduction to New Testament textual criticism for lay people, Misquoting Jesus is very informative and often entertaining. But for more than one reason, such people are liable to get a misimpression from the book. The blurbs on its dust jacket talk about “the multitude of mistakes and intentional alterations … made by earlier translators [sic, 'copyists'],” “mistakes and changes” that Ehrman shows had “great impact … upon the Bible we use today,” thus “making the original words difficult to reconstruct,” so that “many of our cherished biblical stories and widely held beliefs concerning the divinity of Jesus, the Trinity, and the divine origins of the Bible itself stem from both intentional and accidental alterations by scribes—alterations that dramatically affected all subsequent versions of the Bible.” Horsefeathers! So what if John 1:18 originally read in reference to Jesus “the unique Son” rather than “the unique God”? “The Word,” who’ll be identified with “Jesus Christ” (1:17), has already been called “God” in 1:1; and doubting Thomas will call him “my Lord and my God” in John 20:28 (to make nothing of the fact that the King James Version, which “was based on corrupted and inferior manuscripts” [so the dust jacket], translates what Ehrman considers the original reading in 1:18). So what if “the Johannine Comma” in 1 John 5:7–8 (“the Father, the Word, and the Spirit, and these three are one”) represents a copyist’s inference of the Trinity from authentic New Testament texts, not an authentic New Testament text itself? We have those authentic texts for our own inferring of the Trinity. And it’s simply false that “for the first time Ehrman reveals where and why these changes were made” and that he “reveals” the inferiority of the manuscripts underlying the King James Version. We’ve known about this inferiority for a long, long time. It hasn’t led to revolutions in church teaching, nor has it needed to. And though their text-critical judgments don’t always match Ehrman’s, the contemporary translations used nowadays by lay people don’t depend on the inferior manuscripts. (I grant, however, that these translations deserve censure when they include—in any format whatever—Mark’s long ending [16:9–20] and the story about the woman taken in adultery [John 7:53–8:11]; for those passages have poorer manuscript support than many readings completely overlooked in such translations.)

I agree with Gundry–Horsefeathers!!!–Ehrman is a sensationalist in some respects.  To give him credit, he has taken dry, unpalatable tasks involved in text criticism and made the masses aware of the discipline involved–but at what cost.   To sell copy, he has extended his findings into unsupported conclusions.  Back to Gundry, this is about his analyses.

Ehrman also hardens the categories of literary genre, quotation, and copying to such a degree that he seems to think divine inspiration of the Bible would necessarily have produced historicity without admixture of unhistorical elements, quotations that always conform to originally intended meanings, and errorless copying. There’s no room for nuance, free play, or ambiguity. For scriptural inspiration to have worked, everything would have to have been cut and dried. As Ehrman says, “Given the circumstance that [God] didn’t preserve the words [which have 'been changed and, in some cases, lost'], the conclusion seemed inescapable to me that he hadn’t gone to the trouble of inspiring them.”

This quote is key because it shows where Ehrman is really coming from.  He apparently schooled himself to idealistically believe that, for instance, every manuscript copy, if God is truly involved and superintends, will compare letter for letter to every other manuscript copy of the same passage or text.  Again horsefeathers!!!  Many people come out of Moody Bible Institute understanding inspiration, human involvement in recording scriptures, inerrancy and infallibility in a different light than Ehrman.

It is only fitting to quote Gundry’s Postscript to the review and first footnote:

Postscript: Despite the foregoing criticisms, my sympathies often lie with Ehrman. The rigidity of the fundamentalism in which I grew up far exceeded anything he has described concerning his own experience. His inveighing against homogenizing the distinctive messages of biblical authors for the sake of historical harmony strikes in me a resonant chord. And at an early stage of my doctoral research on Matthew’s use of the Old Testament, what increasingly seemed to count as misquotations—the usual suspects: reversing Micah’s description of Bethlehem as small into a strong denial of that description (2:5–6), quoting Hosea’s reference to Israel’s exodus from Egypt as though it predicted the Messiah’s stay in Egypt and exit from there (2:15), and so on—led me at one point to say aloud in the privacy of my study, “God, it’s not looking good for you and your book.” So why didn’t I arrive at Ehrman’s “dead end”? I have no explanation except to say that “by the grace of God” (the phrase Ehrman judges a textual corruption in Hebrews 2:8–9) I was spared a hardening of the categories through which Scripture is perceived. Or since they were already hard—unreasonably hard—I should rather say that the Spirit of God softened my categories so as to give them an elasticity that accommodates the human features of Scripture without excluding its ultimately divine origin. I pray that Ehrman and all others like him may enjoy such a softening.

1. During a session at the 2005 meeting of the American Academy of Religion and the Society for Biblical Literature, Ehrman publicly reproached his publisher for giving his book this title. But the average reader has no way of knowing that, nor did I when writing this review.

Sidenote:  we have textual criticism of the Greek New Testament down!!   No,  Bart Ehrman did not contribute much, if anthing,  to the discipline.  But,  between the Germans, English, Israelis, Americans, the original words of sacred texts have been elucidated.

Who is Jesus? — Bottom Line

If  He, Jesus is God-Incarnate, the God-Man, then, He is superior to all!!! No other man on earth claimed deity. No other man or prophet on earth proved or backed up the claim to deity. We, the followers of Jesus, simply believe that He is who He claimed to be and that He backed that up in the most forceful way by His life on earth. The largest proof is His resurrection from the dead and ascension into Heaven. There is much proof supporting His resurrection from the dead.

You must understand that Christians who accept the Word of God, do not choose to believe that Jesus is the unique way to God. Once we believe He is God in the flesh, we simply have to see Him as the only way to know and serve God truly. Once that is understood—nothing else–no other prophet, no other religion, compares to Him.

What are your thoughts?

Who is Jesus and will you ever know who He is?

Who is Jesus? Do you think you know who He is? Will you ever know who He is? Until you have really contemplated Him and looked at the recorded history of Him, you will never know.

Paul’s friend and companion wrote precise details about his life. That would be one place to go and read if you want the history. Read it as history. Ignore the supernatural if you like for the moment and just find out what happened in his life. You owe it to yourself. What have you got to loose? Get an opinion or belief about him based on fact.

If He, Jesus is God-Incarnate, the God-Man, then, He is superior to all!!! No other man on earth claimed deity–that is, no other sane man. No other man/prophet on earth proved or backed up the claim to deity. We, followers of Jesus, simply believe that He is who He claimed to be and that He backed that up in the most forceful way by His life on earth. The largest proof is His resurrection from the dead and ascension into Heaven.