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Mike Licona responds to Bart Ehrman’s new book on gospel authorship

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In this post on Bible Gateway, Michael Licona assesses Ehrman’s argument that the letters traditionally ascribed to Paul are not traceable back to Paul. Licona argues that Paul would have had access to other people in the Christian community who would have helped him to craft and write his letters.

Here’s Ehrman’s challenge:

Most, though not all, of the arguments against traditional authorship fall into two categories: style and content. However, if an author employed the use of a secretary to write what he dictated as well as provide varying degrees of editing, this would explain quite well why some of the letters in the New Testament whose authorship is questionable have vocabulary, grammar, some content, and an overall writing style that differs, even significantly, from the undisputed letters. Ehrman recognizes this and writes, “Virtually all of the problems with what I’ve been calling forgeries can be solved if secretaries were heavily involved in the composition of the early Christian writings” (134).Did Paul use a secretary at least occasionally? We may answer with an unequivocal yes. Of Paul’s seven undisputed letters, it is certain that he used a secretary for no less than four.

Ehrman concurs, “There is no doubt that the apostle Paul used a secretary on occasion” (134). But he contends that there’s no evidence that Paul used them for any other services such as editing to correct grammar and improve style, coauthor to contribute to content, or compose the letter with the named author giving his final approval (134-36; cf. 77).

And here’s part of his response:

Writing a letter in antiquity was a costly enterprise. Randolph Richards, who is perhaps today’s leading authority on the use of secretaries in antiquity, discusses the costs involved. Papyri, labor, and courier fees added up quickly. Of course, Cicero, Seneca, and the ultra-wealthy could easily afford the costs. But Paul, the missionary, would not have been so fortunate. Richards estimates that the cost for penning Paul’s letters ranged from $101 in today’s dollars for Philemon to $2,275 for Romans. And these figures do not include the expenses involved with a courier.Now perhaps you’re thinking, “But Paul tells us in his letters he had churches that supported him (Phil. 4:10-18; 2 Cor. 11:9). And we know he had co-workers whom he mentions in his letters (Rom. 16:21; 1 Cor. 1:1; 2 Cor. 1:1; 8:23; Phil. 1:1; 2:25; Col. 1:1; 4:11; 1 Th. 1:1; 2 Th. 1:1; Philem. 1:1, 24. cf. Gal. 1:1). They would naturally have been the couriers and could even have served as his secretaries. So, he would have incurred little to no labor costs.” That much is evident.

And what’s to have prevented these co-workers from also providing editorial and compositional services according to their personal abilities? Could the Tertius mentioned in Romans 16:22 have been a professional secretary who had volunteered his services? We will never know. What is clear is the fact that not being a member of the ultra-wealthy does not preclude Paul’s use of a secretary for editing and composition.

[…]The early Christian church faced many situations and theological debates. In their minds, these matters were often more important than life itself. For example, in 1 Corinthians Paul is answering a situation where some members of the church in Corinth were denying an afterlife. Paul replies that if we are not raised from the dead to enjoy eternal life, Christ was not raised from the dead either. And if Christ was not raised, our Christian faith is worthless and our loved ones who have already died are forever gone. In fact, Paul adds, if there is no future resurrection of the dead and this life is all there is, let’s party hard now because we will all be dead in a relatively short period of time (1 Cor. 15:12-19, 32)!

The letters in the New Testament weren’t written for the mere enjoyment of the exercise and at leisure as many of the letters of Cicero and Atticus had been. Given the importance the early Christian letters had for their authors and recipients, there was a much greater need for using a secretary in order to craft the letters carefully. We know Paul could write, since he signed many of his greetings at the end of his letters. So, why have a secretary to whom he could dictate a letter without also depending upon him for editing services?

Here’s a third reason for holding that Paul would want his secretary to be more involved than simply taking dictation: He flat out states that others were involved in his letter writing. Paul was apparently not very good at public speaking. This conclusion comes from information provided in his undisputed letters. In 2 Corinthians 11:6, Paul admits that he is “untrained in public speaking” (See also 1 Cor. 2:1, 4). In 2 Corinthians 10:10-11, he writes, “it is said, ‘His [i.e., Paul’s] letters are weighty and powerful, but his physical presence is weak, and his public speaking is despicable.’ Such a person should consider this: What we are in the words of our letters when absent, we will be in actions when present.”

Notice carefully how the subject changes from Paul the poor public speaker in the singular to the “we” who write the letters. More than one person is involved in writing Paul’s letters. So, the involvement of the secretary appears to go beyond taking simple dictation.

In summary, Ehrman’s argument fails since Paul may not have incurred any costs for his extensive use of a secretary, the important occasions for writing the letters would have motivated Paul’s extensive use of a secretary, and Paul clearly states that others were involved in the actual writing of the letters.

Now I want to say a few words about a recent experience I had talking to a Jewish atheist about what the Bible says about Jesus.

Talking about the Bible with non-Christians

To be convincing and appealing when discussing the New Testament with non-Christians, you need to be very aware of the fact that non-Christians do not understand theological language and they do not assume that the Bible is the inspired and infallible Word of God and they do not think that you have done your homework to know who wrote it and whether it was translated correctly from the originals so many years back.

The right way to discuss the Bible is to talk about the New Testament as a book that contains ancient biographies from a variety of authors. You want to list a number of factors that would affect whether individual verses within individual books are reliable. You want to weigh the arguments for and against the conservative view.

Here are some things to consider:

  • when was the passage written?
  • who wrote the passage?
  • is the passage found in multiple sources?
  • does the passage embarrass the author?
  • does the passage praise the author’s enemies?
  • does the passage hinder the evangelistic message of the early church?

I was recently discussing the Harold Camping prophecy with a friend of mine who is an atheist, and I was explaining the passage where Jesus says that no one knows the date of judgment day. I used multiple sources, early sources, and the criterion of embarrassment to show why my friend should not consider Camping to be a disproof of the reliability of the Bible and an embarrassment to Christians.

Here are the passages I used to discredit Camping’s calculations:

Mark 13:32-33:

32 “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.

33 Be on guard! Be alert! You do not know when that time will come.

Matthew 24:36-44:

36 “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.

37 As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.

38 For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark;

39 and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.

40 Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left.

41Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left.

42 “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come.

43 But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into.

44 So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.

Mark is early, and Matthew provides multiple attestation. But this passage also passes the criterion of embarrassment, because it ascribes ignorance to Jesus – something that the early church would not have made up if they were hoping to gain converts by falsely portraying Jesus as the Messiah. Therefore, it is very likely that this passage is authentic, and would be viewed as authentic even by those who are non-Christians. Any passage that undermines the missionary project of the early church by calling Jesus’ identity as the Messiah into question is guaranteed to be historical. And it goes to show the quality of history you find in the New Testament.

It is sometimes useful to contrast good historically reliable passages with passages that are not viewed as historically reliable. In a related post, William lane Craig is asked by John Ankerberg about a passage that most historians do not view as historically reliable. Even if you are an inerrantist like me, you are not obligated to use and defend every verse when you quote the Bible to make arguments about theology or morality or history. Just analyze the passages that you are using the historical criteria, in order to persuade your non-Christian audience that you are not taking the Bible on faith. If one of your passages fails the tests, then don’t use it – find another passage that passes the tests.

Regarding inerrancy, C. Michael Patton of Parchment & Pen blog doesn’t think that you have to believe in inerrancy to become a Christian. I would argue that mature Christians should believe in inerrancy of the original writings, but new Christians don’t have to.

So, to sum up, don’t talk about the Bible the way that Christian pastors do on Sunday mornings with your non-Christian friends. Talk about the Bible like scholars do with your non-Christian friends. Here is a good example of how Christian and non-Christian scholars talk about the Bible in formal academic debates.

News

Is Oprah Winfrey a Christian?

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Consider this article from CNN.

Excerpt:

Lofton, a professor of U.S. religious history at Yale University and the author of “Oprah: The Gospel of an Icon,” was intrigued that Winfrey had mentioned Jesus, since she had used his name sparingly on air.

“Early on (in her career) she was more comfortable in saying that but over time began to use this more universal language of ‘spirit,'” said Lofton, who wrote about Oprah’s final show for CNN’s Belief Blog.

Lofton says Winfrey wants to be viewed as someone who “translates and understands herself as a Christian woman” but reflects a modern attitude about religion and religious institutions.

And that has angered a few folks.

In 2008, Winfrey endorsed the book “A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose,” helping it sell more than 3.5 million copies after the talk-show host selected it for her book club. Winfrey and the book’s author, Eckhart Tolle, took part in a webinar in which she angered some Christians by saying that Jesus didn’t come to die on the cross.

“It really was about him coming to show us how to do it, how to be, to show us the Christ-consciousness that he had and that that consciousness abides with all of us,” she told the audience.

One viewer even asked the question on the Oprah.com message boards: Is Oprah a Christian?

Pistis07 wrote: “I was surprised because I had always thought she was a Christian but after flicking through her website and watching clips of more shows where she seems to be promoting a type of New Age religion and books from ‘New Age spiritualists,’ I really doubt that she is a Christian in the way Jesus explained and most Christians understand. Or perhaps she’s just confused about the nature of God.”

It was an issue her critics seized on. They said she wasn’t promoting the God of the Bible but instead was indoctrinating her audience into a New Age spiritualism.

Authors Josh McDowell and Dave Sterrett say as much in their book, “‘O’ God: A Dialogue on Truth and Oprah’s Spirituality.” Sterrett told Crosswalk.com in October 2009 that Winfrey “reflects the common American practice of choosing whatever beliefs seem most attractive and leaving the rest.”

Her message in the final years of her show was that the truth of life was within the individual, several commentators have said.

“Christians aren’t people who have gotten in touch with their inner selves, but those who actually have Christ living inside of them through the Holy Spirit,” McDowell told Crosswalk.

What Winfrey tried to get across is her belief that there wasn’t just one right way to be connected to God, Lofton argues.

“The only right way is the way that she herself articulates and embodies, which is multiplicity,” she said. “You can be many things. There are many paths to God, she says. It’s that multiplicity which very much marks contemporary religious life.”

Some people evidently think that she is not. And I agree with those people.

Consider this article by William Lane Craig about salvation and religious pluralism.

Excerpt:

“There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4.12). So proclaimed the early preachers of the gospel of Christ. Indeed, this conviction permeates the New Testament and helped to spur the Gentile mission. Paul invites his Gentile converts to recall their pre-Christian days: “Remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world” (Ephesians 2.12). The burden of the opening chapters of Romans is to show that this desolate situation is the general condition of mankind. Though God’s eternal power and deity are evident through creation (1.20) and the demands of His moral law implanted on the hearts of all persons (2.15) and although God offers eternal life to all who seek Him in well-doing (2.7), the tragic fact of the matter is that in general people suppress the truth in unrighteousness, ignoring the Creator (1.21) and flouting the moral law (1.32). Therefore, “all men, both Jews and Greeks, are under the power of sin, as it is written: ‘None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands, no one seeks for God…'” (3.9-1 1). Sin is the great leveler, rendering all needy of God’s forgiveness and salvation. Given the universality of sin, all persons stand morally guilty and condemned before God, utterly incapable of redeeming themselves through righteous acts (3.19-20). But God in His grace has provided a means of salvation from this state of condemnation: Jesus Christ, by his expiatory death, redeems us from sin and justifies us before God (3.21-26). It is through him and through him alone, then, that God’s forgiveness is available (5.12-21). To reject Jesus Christ is therefore to reject God’s grace and forgiveness, to refuse the one means of salvation which God has provided. It is to remain under His condemnation and wrath, to forfeit eternally salvation. For someday God will judge all men, “inflicting vengeance upon those who do not know God and upon those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They shall suffer the punishment of eternal destruction and exclusion from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might” (II Thessalonians 1.8-9).

It was not just Paul who held to this exclusivistic, Christocentric view of salvation. No less than Paul, the apostle John saw no salvation outside of Christ. In his gospel, Jesus declares, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me” (John 14.6). John explains that men love the darkness of sin rather than light, but that God has sent His Son into the world to save the world and to give eternal life to everyone who believes in the Son. “He who believes is not condemned; he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God” (John 3.18). People are already spiritually dead; but those who believe in Christ pass from death to life (John 5.24). In his epistles, John asserts that no one who denies the Son has the Father and identifies such a person as the antichrist (I John 2.22-23; 4.3; II John 9). In short, “He who has the Son has life; he who has not the Son of God has not life” (I John 5.12). In John’s Apocalypse, it is the Lamb alone in heaven and on earth and under the earth who is worthy to open the scroll and its seven seals, for it was he that by his blood ransomed men for God from every tribe and tongue and people and nation on the earth (Revelation 5.1-14). In the consummation, everyone whose name is not found written in the Lamb’s book of life is cast into the everlasting fire reserved for the devil and his cohorts (Revelation 20.15).

One could make the same point from the catholic epistles and the pastorals. It is the conviction of the writers of the New Testament that “there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all” (I Timothy 2.5-6).

Indeed, it is plausible that such was the attitude of Jesus himself. New Testament scholarship has reached something of a consensus that the historical Jesus came on the scene with an unparalleled sense of divine authority, the authority to stand and speak in the place of God Himself and to call men to repentance and faith.{1} Moreover, the object of that faith was he himself, the absolute revelation of God: “All things have been delivered to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (Matthew 11.27) .{2} On the day of judgment, people’s destiny will be determined by how they responded to him: “And I tell you, everyone who acknowledges me before men, the Son of Man also will acknowledge before the angels of God; but he who denies me before men will be denied before the angels of God” (Luke 12.8-9).{3} Frequent warnings concerning hell are found on Jesus’ lips, and it may well be that he believed that most of mankind would be damned, while a minority of mankind would be saved: “Enter by the narrow gate, for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few” (Matthew 7:13-14) .{4}

A hard teaching, no doubt; but the logic of the New Testament is simple and compelling: The universality of sin and the uniqueness Christ’s expiatory sacrifice entail that there is no salvation apart from Christ.

The Bible is very clear that belief in Christ’s atoning death on the cross is required for a right relationship with God. I find it interesting that so many Christians, especially Christian women, have so much respect for a person who is not even a believer. Can you really rely on a non-Christian to give you advice about morality and spirituality? Is she an authority on the Bible? An authority on logic? An authority on science? An authority on history? Has she debated her views with scholars who disagree with her – as might be done in a courtroom where evidence trumps feelings? Shouldn’t you rely instead on the Bible, and the work of authentic Christian scholars who accept what the Bible teaches?

News

Jay Richards asks: what should Christians believe about global warming?

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From Boundless.

Excerpt:

The big environmental issue nowadays is global warming. Anyone who watches or reads the news even occasionally has been told that humans are causing global warming through all the fossil fuels we’re burning. They’ve also been told that this warming process eventually will prove catastrophic if we don’t reverse course as soon as possible.

As thinking Christians and good stewards, how should we respond?

The short answer is, we should respond thoughtfully. Thoughtless stewards are rarely good stewards.

Notice that my brief summary of the global warming controversy bundled together several distinct claims. To think clearly about this issue, we have to tease apart this bundle of claims and consider each one. For each claim, there is a corresponding question we need to answer. And it’s only after answering these questions that we can be in a position to determine what, if anything, we ought to do about global warming.

Here are the four central questions:

  1. Is the earth warming?
  2. If the earth is warming, is human activity (like carbon dioxide emissions) causing it?
  3. If the earth is warming, and we’re causing it, is that bad overall?
  4. If the earth is warming, we’re causing it, and that’s bad, would any of the proposed “solutions” (e.g., the Kyoto Protocol, legislative restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions) make any difference?

If you like this article, you download a video of a lecture on this same topic, or listen to the audio from the lecture. The lecture was delivered at the University of California, Davis.