Tag Archives: Apologetics

Commentary

What does Bart Ehrman really believe about New Testament reliability?

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Here’s a post from Cross Examined that cites the appendix of Ehrman’s own book.

Excerpt:

Here’s what Ehrman says in an interview found in the appendix of Misquoting Jesus (p. 252):

Bruce Metzger is one of the great scholars of modern times, and I dedicated the book to him because he was both my inspiration for going into textual criticism and the person who trained me in the field. I have nothing but respect and admiration for him. And even though we may disagree on important religious questions – he is a firmly committed Christian and I am not – we are in complete agreement on a number of very important historical and textual questions. If he and I were put in a room and asked to hammer out a consensus statement on what we think the original text of the New Testament probably looked like, there would be very few points of disagreement – maybe one or two dozen places out of many thousands.  The position I argue for in ‘Misquoting Jesus’ does not actually stand at odds with Prof. Metzger’s position that the essential Christian beliefs are not affected by textual variants in the manuscript tradition of the New Testament.

So why does Ehrman give one impression to the general public and the opposite to the academic world?  Could it be because he can get away with casting doubt on the New Testament to an uninformed public, but not to his academic peers? Does selling books have anything to do with it?  I don’t know.  I just find the contradiction here quite telling– the man who gets all the attention for casting doubt on the text of the Bible, upon further review, doesn’t really doubt it himself.

Wow. That’s funny. He doesn’t say that when he’s trying to sell books. He sounds more like Dan Brown when he’s trying to sell books. I always lump Bart Ehrman and Dan Brown together. Dan Brown. Bart Ehrman. Dan Brown. Bart Ehrman. Does Dan Brown fill in for Bart Erhman when Bart Ehrman is on sabbatical? Is Bart Ehrman secretly a ghost-writer for Dan Brown? Are they the same person?

Further study

The top 10 links to help you along with your learning on this issue and related issues.

  1. How every Christian can learn to explain the resurrection of Jesus to others
  2. The earliest source for the minimal facts about the resurrection
  3. The earliest sources for the empty tomb narrative
  4. Who were the first witnesses to the empty tomb?
  5. Did the divinity of Jesus emerge slowly after many years of embellishments?
  6. What about all those other books that the Church left out the Bible?
  7. Assessing Bart Ehrman’s case against the resurrection of Jesus
  8. William Lane Craig debates radical skeptics on the resurrection of Jesus
  9. Did Christianity copy from Buddhism, Mithraism or the myth of Osiris?
  10. Quick overview of N.T. Wright’s case for the resurrection

Debates are a fun way to learn

Three debates where you can see this play out:

Or you can listen to my favorite debate on the resurrection.

Extra stuff

A lecture on Bart Ehrman by William Lane Craig.

Videos

William Lane Craig explains whether all religions lead to God

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Here’s a lecture from William Lane Craig in which he explains one solution (middle knowledge) to the problem of those who have never heard of Jesus. If Jesus is the only way to be saved, then what about those who have never heard of him?

Here’s a ten-minute sample from the start of the lecture.

You can watch the other 5 small clips on YouTube, or you can watch the whole thing in one big clip on Vimeo.

And I haven’t forgotten people who can’t see the video, because you can read an essay on the same topic here. I think that this is one of the first William Lane Craig essays I ever saw back when I was just a freshman in college.

Going deeper

In this research paper, Craig explains middle knowledge in detail. Middle knowledge is the view that God foreknows how people will choose in every set of circumstances, and that God uses that knowledge to get everyone where they need to be to have the best opportunity to know him without violating their free will. God wants the best for everybody, and has ordered to whole universe in order to give each of us our best opportunity to have a relationship with him that leads to eternal life.

Related posts

These are related to a debate on Hinduism (in chronological order)

Videos

Frank Turek video lecture on young people leaving the church

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An exciting 45-minute lecture on the mass exodus of young people from the church.

I hope this shows up, I’ve never linked a Google video before.

UPDATE: It worked! WordPress rocks!

And here is another good lecture (composed of several parts) from William Lane Craig.

I think these lectures are great for reminding Christian parents that being a Christian is not just about NOT doing sins A, B and C and then feeling good about yourself. And it’s not about just trying to be happy in this life like the non-Christians – using Christianity as part of your happiness buffet. It’s about living your life as an enterprise in a way that increases your knowledge of and friendship with God. A relationship with God means being sensitive to his needs and concerns and acting in a way that takes his character into account.