Archive for August, 2012

    I was very sorry today to learn that Carlo Martini passed away.  He was an important textual scholar who was best known for other things — in particular for being in the very higher reaches of the Roman Catholic church hierarchy.  He was the cardinal of Milan (Italy) and for a while was thought to be a candidate to be the next pope.   He was 85 at his death.

     I never met him, but I long knew of him and actually had correpondence with him when I was a graduate student.   He was a terrific scholar of the Greek New Testament, an expert in the Greek manuscripts.  He wrote a very important book (in Italian) on one of the most important biblical manuscripts, codex Vaticanus.   As one of the premier experts on the text of the New Testament….

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Some readers have objected to my insistence that New Testament scholars, on the whole, do not take seriously the claims of the mythicists that Jesus never existed.   I have always stressed that Jesus’ existence is known (and can be demonstrated) by thousands of New Testament scholars.  But I have also always stressed that scholarly consensus on this issue is not in itself *evidence* (my detractors among the mythicists seem to overlook this little point, when they claim that I argue that since the consensus says something it must be true; that’s not my view at all!).   At the same time, it is worthwhile knowing what the experts say — whether talking about the age of our universe (13.8 billion years; but I wouldn’t be able to calculate that myself); about the theory of evolution (Hey, it’s just a *theory*!  yes, but so too is the “theory” of gravity!!); about the forgery of the Hitler diaries; or about anything else that involves expertise.  At the same time, it is worthwhile in all these cases to know what the evidence is.  That is why in Did Jesus Exist? I don’t simply state that virtually every expert on the planet says yes, but I show what the hard evidence is.

A couple of days ago a prominent New Testament scholar stated his own view of the matter, which I found amusing: he is even more forthright than I am!   This is Larry Hurtado, emeritus professor of New Testament studies in one of the premier programs of religious studies in the U.K., at the University of Edinburgh.  His full comments can be found at http://www.patheos.com/blogs/bibleandculture/2012/08/28/hurtado-on-did-jesus-exist/   Here is the relevant section.

I was emailed last week by someone asking why scholars don’t engage the “mythicists” (as they are called) on the issue. Were we afraid that we’d be out-gunned in an argument? Did we secretly know that the denyers had it all? Were we being elitist?

For me, it’s a matter of having a good many prior commitments to produce positive contributions to the study of early Christianity (e.g., right now, I’m trying to get on with an essay on “Who Read Early Christian Apocrypha?” for a multi-author volume). But another reason for feeling it less than necessary to spend a lot of time on the matter is that all the skeptical arguments have been made and effectively engaged many decades ago. Before posting this, I spent a bit of time perusing my copy of H. G. Wood, Did Christ Really Live?, which was published in 1938. In it, Wood cites various figures of the early 20th century who had claimed that Jesus of Nazareth was a fiction, and patiently and cordially engages the specifics of evidence and argument, showing that the attacks fail.

So in one sense I think I’m not alone in feeling that to show the ill-informed and illogical nature of the current wave of “mythicist” proponents is a bit like having to demonstrate that the earth isn’t flat, or that the sun doesn’t revolve around the earth, or that the moon-landings weren’t done on a movie lot. It’s a bit wearying to contemplate.

      Let me stress, these are not my words.  The are the words of one of the top scholars of Christian antiquity in the U.K.  But they are certainly worth noting, for their candor if nothing else.  My sense is that most experts would agree with him.

I have indicated that my preferred translation is the NRSV.  Everyone, of course, has their favorite.  My judgment is that among main-line, serious biblical scholars, the NRSV is far and away the preferred translation.  But it is not so among general readers.   I believe the King James Bible (the KJV) (or its slight revision: The New King James) and the New International Version (NIV) are better sellers among the population at large.   So let me say a few words about these two.  (Some readers of this blog will want to write to me to ask what I think of their own preferred translation: the Jerusalem Bible; the New English Version; the New American Standard Bible; etc etc.  Most of the time I tell them that it’s fine.  It just isn’t the one that I think is the best)

First: The King James.   Published in 1611, the KJV (or “Authorized Version” as it was called, since it was a translation “authorized” by the head of the Anglican Church – guess who?  King James of England), is one of the great classics of the English language and ought to be read and learned by everyone.  If you want to read a fascinating account of the making of the KJV, see Adam Nicolson’s terrific study, God’s Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible.

Even though it is a great piece of English literature, the KJV is not a great study Bible.  That is for a couple of reasons….

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A number of people have responded to some of my recent comments by asking what my preferred Bible translation is.  I get asked the question a lot – especially since my book Misquoting Jesus, where I talk about the changes scribes made in the manuscripts they copied over the years.  A number of readers were alarmed and wondered whether I should let scholars know about these problems.  In every case I responded that yes, indeed, scholars – all scholars of the Bible – do know about these problems.  Intimately.  Inside and out.  This is the kind of thing scholars work on.  Nothing in the book would have come as a shock to anyone in the field.  Most especially to Bible translators, who have to decide which Hebrew and Greek words to translate before even starting to think about how to put them into English.   And so, as a result, every modern Bible translator knows about and deals with these problems.

But back to the question: which translation do I prefer?  It will probably come as no surprise to learn that I prefer…..

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QUESTION: 

Dr. Ehrman,

I am still reading your book (God’s problem) which seems to be very interesting since you are not interesting to gain any approval from anybody but only to communicate what you believe and where you are today. Congratulations for that….

 Did you became a better human being after losing your faith?

RESPONSE:

 Great question!  Most people have assumed the opposite, that anyone who loses his or her faith must become a worse person.   The logic seems to be that without a belief in God, there would be no grounds for morals and that people left to their own unconstrained devices would have no reason to avoid living in any kind of shameful way they chose.

 I have to admit, when I was a Christian, that’s what I myself thought.  And it was one of the reasons that, for years, I was reluctant to question seriously my faith in God.  I was afraid that if I no longer believed there would be nothing stopping me from becoming completely profligate and having orgies every night. 

Now that I’m an agnostic I have come to see that once a week is absolutely enough.    

Seriously, my fears were absolutely unfounded.   There are lots and lots of reasons to be moral whether or not God exists….

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MORE REFLECTIONS IN RESPONSE TO THE QUESTION ABOUT MY RELATIONSHIP WITH MY MENTOR BRUCE METZGER

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Two rather humorous stories connected with my work as the administrative assistant for the revision of the Revised Standard Version.

In that capacity I was, of course, present for the various deliberations of the committee.  Among the many issues they discussed was what to call the new revision.   Ultimately it stood in the tradition of the “Authorized Version” – the technical name of the King James Version.   In 1881, the KJV underwent an “official” revision (i.e., authorized by the ecclesiastical authorities who owned the copyright) in the Revised Version.   Its committee received a lot of flak for the changes it made.  Even though it was an English revision, there were several Americans who were on the committee.  As part of their terms of involvement, they agreed not to publish and American version of the translation (making changes as they saw fit and bringing spelling and punctuation into conformity with American usage) for 20 years; and so in 1901 was published the American Standard Version.

As I mentioned before, this version was revised to bring the language up to date and to make necessary changes based on advances in scholarship some 50 years later, with the publication of the Revised  Standard Version.    And now, about 30 years or so later….

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Several of my recent posts have elicited comments from multiple participants (same comment, asked in a variety of ways).  One of them had to do with the question of the language that Jesus would have spoken with Pontius Pilate during his trial.  A number of people have asked “why not Greek”?  The logic behind this question/solution is that Pilate as an educated Roman would have been fluent in Greek; and Jesus, living in “Galilee of the Gentiles,” where he probably engaged in a small business (carpentry) would have had to communicate with the non-Jews in his midst, and so probably could speak Greek as well.  Moreover, he grew up in Nazareth not far from the urbane city of Sepphoris, and would have acquired Greek language and culture there.

 That is a common view among many students of the Bible.  And so what’s wrong with it?

As with most interesting questions, this one requires virtually an entire book to answer, so I will give only the short version, which is this: it is true that Pilate almost certainly could speak Greek, and almost certainly as true that Jesus could not.

For anyone who wants the full documentation, I strongly urge you to read the two books by Mark Chancey on Galilee….

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A CONTINUATION OF MY POSTS OF MY RELATIONSHIP WITH BRUCE METZGER

                I served as one of the secretaries for the NRSV, as explained in my previous post, for a couple of years.  It was not onerous work and was quite a privilege to be able to associate with some of the greatest biblical scholars and Semitic philologists of the time.  I was, of course, a complete nobody.   Some of the members of the committee treated me (and the other secretaries) as complete nobodies (these tended to be the less qualified and more insecure members of the committee; I won’t name names!); others treated me (and the others) in a dignified and respectful way, realizing that we were, after all, just graduate students, but knowing that we were advanced and heading into academic careers of our own.

                When I graduated from my PhD program I was teaching part time at Rutgers, but I did not have a full time, tenure-track position there.   It was a slightly oppressive situation, as adjunct positions at universities typically are.   I’ll say more about that in a later post.  For now: I was working part time teaching at Rutgers, and Metzger asked me if I was interested in being his full time research assistant for the Bible translation committee….

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A CONTINUATION OF MY RECOLLECTIONS OF BRUCE METZGER, MY MENTOR.

When I was still a graduate student in the PhD program at Princeton Theological Seminary, Metzger invited me to serve as a secretary for the committee that was producing the new revision of the Revised Standard Version translation of the Bible.   The RSV (on which the new translation was to be based) had come out in 1952, and it had caused a huge furor at the time.  It was an “official” revision of the King James Bible, that was supposed to update the language (English has changed a lot since 1611), to take into consideration new manuscript discoveries (especially important for the New Testament, since the KJV was based on only a few medieval manuscripts that were not of very high quality; hundreds of better ones had since been discovered, and to incorporate the findings of modern Biblical scholarship).

The RSV of 1952 was an “official” translation because it was authorized by the National Council of Churches in the U.S.   But in the opinion of very conservative Christians it was an outrage, the product of liberal biblical scholarship, not of true believers.  (!)   …

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ONE OF MY RECENT POSTS ON BRUCE METZGER MADE ME THINK OF WHEN I GOT MY FIRST TEACHING JOB.  NOT SURE WHY.  BUT HERE ARE SOME REFLECTIONS ABOUT IT….

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My students are alternatively comforted and chagrined to learn how hard it was for me to get a teaching position.   It makes them feel good that they are not alone, but bad that they too might have a hard time – even harder.   I was on the job market while I was writing my dissertation..  And even though there were job openings, I couldn’t get an interview to save my soul.  Part of the problem was that my PhD was from a theological seminary, and a lot of the jobs were at secular institutions – state universities, private colleges, and the like.   Most places simply don’t want to take a chance on someone who has been trained in a theological environment.  Especially someone like me at the time.   I had never set foot in a secular setting since high school!  Starting when I was 17, I was at Moody Bible Institute (3 years), Wheaton College (2 years), and then Princeton Seminary (7 years).  Yikes!

And even theological schools and Christian colleges were not, by and large, interested in me…

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