(30 votes, average: 4.93 out of 5)
Loading...The other recent development in conservative evangelical apologetics – so far as I can discern as an outsider – is a real move to adopt serious historical scholarship on the Bible and apply it to the defense of the reliability of Scripture. That may seem like a paradoxical move to non-evangelicals, since it is precisely serious historical scholarship that, since the 18th century, has been the major problem when it comes to the reliability of the Scripture. In fact, it’s the *main* problem. So, uh, how does that work?
I believe, but I may be wrong, that Mike Licona is at the forefront of this development within evangelical circles. Two of his most popular books are Evidence for God and The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus. His view is that we should not try to harmonize different Gospel accounts in every instance. Sometimes, of course, it’s perfectly suitable and appropriate (I agree on this). But sometimes harmonization simply leads to weirdness and implausibility. At least in the eyes of most reasonable human beings.
And so, for example, in Matthew’s Gospel, at the Last Supper, Jesus tells Peter that he, Peter, will deny him three times that night before the cock crows. In Mark’s Gospel, he tells Peter that he will deny him three times before the cock crows twice. Well, which is it? In the old style of harmonization – I thought this was funny even in my younger days – a standard reconciliation is to say that what actually happened is that Peter denied Jesus SIX times: three times before the cock crowed and three more before it crowed the second time. Yeah, right.
The problem with that interpretation, apart from being rather risible, is that it means that none of
the Gospels indicates what Jesus actually said or what actually happened, since what *really* happened isn’t what any of the Gospels says. Do you really want to change, or rather, sacrifice what the authors said in order to make sure they don’t disagree?
Mike has written a recent book taking a very different approach, one that actually is interested in historical research; it’s called Why Are There Differences in the Gospels (Oxford University Press, 2016). Rather than harmonize the accounts, he tries to explain why they are different. And they are different because …
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I was once asked if I thought the bible is inerrant. I replied, “Who cares? We are not inerrant readers.”
Ha! That doesn’t seem to matter to inerrantists!
When did the inerrancy doctrine — that you adhered to in your younger days — originate? Thanks!
At the end of the 19th century at the Niagara conferences.
Of all the apologist, I like Mike Laconia the best. He is a good, kind and thoughtful man, unlike Billy Craig. Dr. Robert Price made the comment something about he thinks it is only a matter of time before Mike throws the towel in and joins the side of Bart! We will see!
Dr Ehrman: I think if there were truly a god it would have used a better means of transmitting its word to all of us than on papyrus or stone or paper. It would deliver it personally don’t you think??
Interesting question. I ahve no idea what God would do!
That question should be asked to the author or authors of that fictional character.
But I think they will tell you that he will do in each case what they, the creators of that fictional character, wants him to do.
Perhaps god/God started with a big bang, creating matter and the laws of physics, allowing stuff/Us to evolve in space and time. Perhaps we’ll figure it out some day, as our understanding evolves also.
Elements of Licona’s view seem to coincide with the current take in the Catholic Church, i.e. that “Therefore, since everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit, it follows that the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully, and without error that truth which God wanted put into the sacred writings for the sake of our salvation.” Dei Verbum (from Vatican II)
Twists on this have been made since, e.g. by Pope Benedict XVI in Verbum Domini. He made a point of saying that the biblical texts are founded on historical events and not myth, and that exegetes must hold to the historicity of central mysteries of the faith, such as Jesus’ institution of the eucharist and his bodily resurrection. (Sounds a little contradictory to talk about the historicity of a mystery. But maybe it’s not.)
The inference from the above is that our construal of the literal sense of some utterance may not be the biblical author’s ASSERTION – that maybe the biblical author is asserting something other than the proposition that the text presents on a literal construal.
There’s a 2011 book on this which I waded through a few years ago, sc. For the Sake of Our Salvation:
https://books.google.com/books?id=5hO1wCHP0nUC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false
I think some obvious questions follow from the view that scripture is inerrant in what it asserts:
WHAT does it/the sacred author assert?
WHO gets to decide what it/he is asserting?
WHAT speech act is being performed by those words that the exegete thinks do not express an assertion? Or are we back to the old notion of Two Truths, condemned in the 13th century, by which an assertion in scripture couched as though it’s made in a literal sense is not true in its literal sense and simultaneously is true on some upper-story level? I mean to exclude here utterances that are presented as though they are simile/metaphor, parable, allegory, precept, etc.
Interesting. Somehow I don’t think Mike would want to be identified with the doctrines of the RCC!!
[…] “it follows that the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully, and without error that truth which God wanted put into the sacred writings for the sake of our salvation.”
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The Catholic Church’s solution to the dilemma posed by this doctrinal statement is very simple: the Bible is inerrant in matters that have to do with salvation, whatever that term is, that nobody knows well.
Of course, the question immediately comes: and who decides what are these issues relevant to our salvation?
The Catholic Church has never presented to its parishioners a complete list of those matters of salvation. But when Catholic scholars and hierarchies are asked, they tell you the same thing: “Look at the Catechism of the Holy Catholic Church.” And secondly, they refer you to the Ecumenical Councils and the Pope’s Encyclicals in which the Supreme Pontiff, speaking “ex cathedra”, is infallible.
This solution of centrally and institutionally controlling the interpretation of the Holy Scriptures has worked well most of the time, except, principally, in the two great Schisms: the Orthodox or Eastern and the Protestant.
On the one hand, I give kudos to Catholics for allowing the faithful to accept the text as literal in Genesis or as allegory (as long as they accept a real Adam and Eve). But it causes much distress and arguing amongst those faithful as to who is right! And boy, do they argue it! I really wish the Magesterium would just be clear and say it’s allegorical…except Adam and Eve, so that those more fundamental Catholics would not feel so conflicted over the findings of science.
Plus, it would drive the fundamental Protestants nuts! ????
WHO gets to decide what it/he is asserting? For Catholics, it’s the Magesterium and they tend to avoid doing so. They want their cake and to eat it, too.
It’d be great to see a guest post from Mike in response to this!
Thank you Bart, absolutely fascinating. Forgive me for asking an off topic question. Which books of the Hebrew Bible did the Sadducees regard as inspired scripture?
Certainly the Torah. It’s not clear about the others that later were everywhere accepted.
And the irony is that the best contemporary source we have to deal with this question is the New Testament, where Jesus seems to side with the Pharisees against the Sadducees on the question of marriage in the World to Come. [mt 22] It’s fascinating to me that Act portrays Paul as arguing that he’s been arrested basically because the Sadducees oppose the doctrine of the resurrection, which he, as a Pharisee teaches. To me the portrays Paul as an utter sophist. Am I being too harsh?
Nope, I had a student write his PhD dissertation that the book of Acts does portray Paul precisely as a Sophist — and that the historical Paul reall was one. The book was published: look up Mark Givens.
It seems that Mike Licona’s “Gist Inerrancy” viewpoint has created the following Fundamental Scylla and Charybdis: Either
1) God is a fan of using literary devices that create contradictions or fabrications of the actual space-time record OR
2) the written Bible isn’t entirely God’s Word.
What does one do with Hebrews 6: 18 (“…it is impossible for God to lie…) and 1) above?
And, how does one contend with the double contradiction of false literary devices and God not allowing editing of his Words?
On Heb. 6:18 Mike would insist it’s not a lie. And God is *inspiring* the authors, not writing for them.
No matter how one looks at it, the intent to deceive is there (to lie): If God “inspired” Mark to say take the staff, and then God “inspired” Matthew to say don’t take the staff in order to make it “seem” like what Jesus would say, God/God-Inspired-Matthew would be intending to deceive his readers in order to convey something that he thinks significant, which is still a lie. Technically, a space-time lie. More specifically, if Mark’s account is historically true, then the actual sound waves propagated from Jesus’s mouth to the disciples’ ears did not have a similar frequency to the sound “don’t” in Aramaic or Hebrew. That is a lie.
And re: inspiration, I have never really seen this other than a distinction without a difference from “God wrote it.” Because, if God inspired the NT authors, as opposed to affecting them to write EXACTLY what God wanted them to write (word for word), then inspiration of Scripture seems to allow for some of the non-God approved words to make it onto the papyrus, which would then contradict 2 Tim 3: 16-17, assuming those verses included the NT as Scriptures.
Glad to see Licona open to a more objective approach in biblical scholarship here. Besides him there are a couple more conservative scholars who I believe don’t always follow the party line which I am sure is a risk within their environment. Bart, with your rather extensive exposure of that community can you name any more like Licona who you more or less have an appreciation of? Thanks.
Well, I like nearly all of them, except the rabid types. Craig Keener who was also there is obviously a very serious scholar. But I think both of them go only so far in their scholarship, and stop only when it starts getting dicey for their faith claims/views, and for me that’s not satisfactory.
CS Lewis made *similar* arguments, according to Wheaton’s Philip Ryken:
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“Although Lewis was careful not to use the word error in the Kilby [Clyde Kilby, Former Chair of Wheaton’s English Department] correspondence, he did use it in one of his earlier letters. “Errors of minor fact are permitted to remain” in Scripture, he wrote. “One must remember of course that our modern and western attention to dates, numbers, etc. simply did not exist in the ancient world. No one was looking for that sort of truth” (Letters, vol. 3, 961, emphasis original). Thus, the Bible is not the word of God “in the sense that every passage, in itself, gives impeccable science of history” (Psalms, 112).
To give a more specific example, the large numbers given for the armies of Israel in the Old Testament led Lewis to rule out “the view that any one passage taken in isolation can be assumed to be inerrant in exactly the same sense as any other.” “The very kind of truth we are often demanding was,” in his opinion, “never even envisaged by the ancients” (Letters, vol. 3, 1,046, emphasis original).
Minor factual errors were not troubling to Lewis; nor did they diminish his confidence in the overall truthfulness of the Bible. In his book The Problem of Pain he claimed, “If our Lord had committed himself to any scientific or historical statement which we knew to be untrue, this would not disturb my faith in His deity.”
In saying this, Lewis did not actually attribute any error to the words of Jesus, but he was saying that discovering certain errors would not threaten the core of Christian orthodoxy. He went further in his essay “The World’s Last Night.” There, in addressing the seeming discrepancy between the disciples’ expectation of the imminent return of Jesus Christ and the actual timing of the second coming, Lewis said that Jesus “shared, and indeed created, their delusion” (98).”
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Source: https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/inerrancy-and-the-patron-saint-of-evangelicalism-c-s-lewis-on-holy-scripture
Maybe the argument is that it’s inerrant in what matters? The important thing, the essence of the passage, is that Jesus sent out his disciples and that he gave them instructions to take as little as possible. That is true – the rest is detail.
Have you branched out? I found recently that you can buy “Ehrman protein pudding” here in Sweden? :o)
Right! And the question is: who gets to decide what matters? For me the walking on the water doesn’t matter. So does it matter if it didn’t happen?
Hmm… I always wanted to produce protein pudding….
Maybe you could do commercials for them. “Being a Bible scholar means you sometimes eat on the job, and it’s obviously bad for you not to get regular meals. That’s why I always carry a can of Ehrmann’s protein pudding with me.”
I am having great joy watching this entire social experiment. I like you Bart was taught the full blown: no mistakes, no contradiction fundamentalism. But look what has happened over the last 30 years. 1). Scholars finally wrote and distributed books to the masses. (And I say shame on academia for not doing so earlier…!!). 2). The access of information to the “youth” through the internet eliminates the fundamentalists ability to cut off information and distribute exclusive information (brain washing). And with these factors, fundamentalism is on the defense. And I think it is hysterical…!!! Finally, I wonder how “liberal” the fundamentalist will become in the next 30 years (compared to my and your starting points)? I predict a lot… And I believe it’s because of you and many other incredible scholars AND the internet…. So thanks for your hard work….!!
Yes, I’ve wondered about that too — the mass availability of reasoned and reasonable scholarship pretty much forcing a shift…
This may explain the decline in regular church attendance and growth in The “non religious” category among younger Americans.
Faith based reasoning strikes again!
Mike’s technique may be proving pursuasive to his acolytes in appearing to reconcile rather than actually create strong arguments against biblical contradictions. I find there are times it’s effective to string a line from one thing to another. Even if that line seems tenuous, it’s still a line. And unfortunately, for some, a line is good enough.
Are there any instances of passages that, in your opinion, can be seen as contradictory not only in details but also in their gist/essence/teaching?
I think the teachings of Jesus in John are very much at odds with his teaching in the Synoptics.
Dr. Ehrman,
Have you ever detailed some of the differences between the synoptic Gospels and John in a single post? If not, that would be a great read here on the forum.
Uh, probably. I’ll look to see and repost it! but just this *one* issue would take a few posts to establish, so it’ snot as simple as pointing out a contradiction in a detail.
Here is a quote on the problems of defining inerrancy from a Charles Ryrie Study Bible from 1979, but I think it’s actually from an earlier book he wrote in the 1960’s. Anyway seems like not much has changed in trying to define the slippery fish of inerrancy:
Just to illustrate how times have changed, not many years ago all one had to say to affirm his belief in the full inspiration of the Bible was that he believed it was “the Word of God.” Then it became necessary to add “the inspired Word of God.” Later he had to include “the verbally, inspired Word of God.” Then to mean the same thing he had to say “the plenary (fully), verbally, inspired Word of God.” Then came the necessity to say “the plenary, verbally, infallible, inspired Word of God.” Today one has to say “the plenary, verbally, infallible, inspired, and inerrant-in-the original manuscripts Word of God.” And even then, he may not communicate clearly!
Ha! I was a big Charles Ryrie fan back in the day….
If the conclusion is required to be that the Bible is inerrant (just because) (because it IS, dammit, shut up!), then they have to conclude that it is inerrant.
It would be very polite for you to stand back and let them acknowledge modern scholarship and give them some room to work out how to reconcile it with their requirement of inarrancy. You will inevitably get to “win” in the end. You can even say “I told you so,” if it makes you feel better when the time comes.
But right now, the guys who are trying to make sense of modern scholarship are taking giant scary chances with fate, and it is just mean to taunt them. You might even add to their burden enough to drive them back underground, leaving the congregants in turmoil for yet another generation. I vote that you should take pity on them and hold back while they work it out.
It seems to me that the Evangelical movement have painted themselves into a corner going down the rode of inerrancy. Surely before the Holiness Movement at the turn our century they did not think like this?
It all started at the end of the 19th century at the “Niagara Conferences”
” So the stories themselves are accurate in the gist of what they are saying. The details may vary, but the details are not what matter to the author. It is the gist of the story that matters. And there are no mistakes in the gist of the matter.”
So the gist of the bible may be Do good to others but the detail that Jesus is God may be wrong?
Works for me, actually.
Exactly! Who gets to decide the gist?
But doesn’t the fact that Matthew felt able to make changes to Mark’s text indicate that he didn’t think Mark was inerrant?
thanks
Ha!!
That’s an excellent point.
It’s what conservatives these days would call “alternative facts”.
Nothing, not light nor heat nor anything else, can escape from a black hole within its event horizon. But this violates the 1st law of thermodynamics. So Steven Hawking used quantum physics to explain, that, yes, energy at least in the form of heat CAN escape (quantum tunneling). Hawking used equations which required his INTUITING the existence of “gray body factors.” Without this assumption, the equations don’t work, no reconciliation.
Einstein invented his “cosmological constant” to explain contradictions within relativity. Etc.
So this sort of clever inventiveness is hardly limited to proving biblical inerrancy.
The difference is that, at least for most of us, whether-or-not energy can escape from a black hole has no bearing on whether we will enjoy eternal blissful life (or eternal torment) after death, or whether Jesus was raised from the dead. If ya gotta hold onto this, good luck convincing (with) these guys and gals.
I often wonder how it is that we have such a knack for rationalizing or explaining things away, and why we even want to. I often did this when I was a Christian.
It is *so* human nature. We have to fight against it, or it ain’t ever goin’ away…
When someone presents an idea that seems reasonable enough, to an extent at least, at what point do you draw the line?
Perhaps Matthew said “don’t even take a staff” to emphasize Mark’s “take only the bare essentials.” That seems reasonable I suppose. It might also simply mean that either Matthew or Mark blundered. The point can be: contradictions don’t matter if they preserve/were made to emphasize the overall meaning, which remains intact. This could work with other discrepancies. Does it matter that John changed the day Jesus died to symbolize him being the Passover lamb being slaughtered? Does that negative any “big picture” that the Synoptics mean to convey? I’m not sure it does.
I’m not sure this works with every contradiction though. What might be a good example of a contradiction in which this principle cannot work?
Interesting. I can see what you mean on one level. But if you report my words precisely opposite to how I said them, in my books it’s an error. There’s a difference between saying “it’s not a contradiction” and saying “it doesn’t matter if it’s a contradiction.” Those seem to me to be very different perspectives.
On your other question — another good one. I’d say that John’s account of Jesus’ teachings stand at odds with those of the Synoptics. It’s not a “contradiction” strictly speaking, but my sense is that your theory would eliminate *every* contradiction strictly speaking, so there really can’t be contradictions!
As you’ve pointed out, how one defines and uses terms can be a point of contention as much as the ideas themselves.
If one means to say the Bible doesn’t contain “errors” as long as it remains “true” despite “discrepancies” then perhaps it could be “inerrant.”
In the case of ancient biographies at least, if it was accepted that nobody knew what Jesus or Julius Caesar said one day, but they know (with relative certainty at least) what happened in the past, and they accepted that speeches were made up, then there is no “correct” speech. Did Jesus say “take only a staff” or “do not take a staff?” Maybe he said neither and, even if we could ever know, quoting the historical Jesus was never the intention in the first place. If that is true, why is the discrepancy necessarily an error?
I don’t mean to suggest this line of thought can explain all discrepancies or show that the Bible is inerrant. But I do think it has some merit.
[Bart] I’d say that John’s account of Jesus ’teachings stand at odds with those of the Synoptics. It’s not a “contradiction” strictly speaking.
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[Fernando] My knowledge of English is not as good as those who have that language as a vernacular and who write in this blog. Therefore, I turn to the dictionary.
And with the dictionary in hand, “stand at odds” – i.e., in conflict or at variance – is a contradiction strictly speaking.
[anthonygale] “The point can be: contradictions don’t matter if they preserve / were made to emphasize the overall meaning, which remains intact.”
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You are talking then about hyperbole, a rhetorical figure that should never be taken literally.
However, misused hyperbole can lead to contradictions, because it can change the nature or sense of what you want to emphasize.
But it is more: in the example that you put:
[…] “and [Jesus] tells them to take nothing with them except a staff: no bread, no bag, no extra money. Just a staff (Mark 6: 7-13). In Matthew’s version Jesus tells them not to take anything, and explicitly says “not a staff” (Matthew 10: 5-15) “, there is no place to talk about Matthew using a hyperbole when narrating the words of Jesus. It simply changes them completely – “not a staff”, for example – in relation to what can be read in Marcos, and therefore, is a pure contradiction.
Sort of reminds me of the argument that a Pope can make mistakes, yet still be infallible on ‘matters of the faith’. It seems to me the crux of the problem is that Mike and others who follow his ‘logic’ still desperately need to believe that the Bible is the word of God, and as such, cannot *really* have any errors in it. To accomplish this and make their argument ‘credible’ to an educated 21st century audience; however, they need to engage in extreme and convoluted mental gymnastics that would put even Simone Biles to shame. I think as long as the Bible is seen in this manner – as the direct word of God – people of faith are going to have to engage, to a greater or lesser degree, in these mental (apologies to Jerry Stiller) ‘feats of strength’.
I can empathize with people who want the Bible to be inerrant, as I once did. But no matter how much I wanted the Bible to be inerrant, the Bible finally convinced me that it was not.
Anyone familiar with C. Dennis Mckinsey’s 800+ page volume titled Biblical Errancy? Surely this book and others are an absolute nightmare for apologists. What other titles would be good to add to our reading lists?
I don’t know it. What does he say?
I don’t know the book. What does he say?
To me, the following contradictions seem to change the “gist” of the message they seek to convey.
You mention the first of these in many debates and talks.
Mark 15:34 (” Jesus cried, my god, my god, why hast though forsaken me?” versus john 10:30 (“I and the father are one.”)
AND
Matt 11:14 (John the baptist is Elijah) VS John 1:21 (John says he isn’t Elijah)
AND
John 1:25-36 & 3:23-24 (While in prison John the baptist knew who Jesus was) VS Matt 11:2-3 (While in prison he did not know who Jesus was)
AND
ROM 3: 23 ( “For all have sinned and come short”) VS Luke 1:6 (“Zacharias and his wife Elizabeth were both righteous before the God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless.”) AND JOB 1:8 ( “my servant job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and upright man.”)
Mckinsey lists over 50 chronological contradictions your familiar with, over 30 between Matthew and Luke’s gospels and 18 or so between Matthew and Mark’s where the order of the events are reversed. And no, these chronological contradictions don’t change the gist of the message. As Mike suggests, what happened, happened, the authors shouldn’t be held to standards we hold to modern historical events, so if they want to change the details a bit so as to be more palatable and digestible for the readers whats the harm, right? Conceding this leaves Mike’s argument vulnerable, whereby one may contest as you have already said, these texts are simply not historically reliable in a modern society. This is progress of a kind!
Biblical Errancy: A reference guide by Mckinsey is perhaps the most comprehensive book of bible errors and contradictions in circulation aside from the bible itself, it comes with a heavy price tag. After further reflection on the contents, the author doesn’t make any arguments apologists would shudder at per say. in fact, within the cover is a comprehensive list or errors and contradictions to be used as a reference guide to support previously held arguments. Cheers!
I find this thread so interesting because we get to see, almost in real time, outside influences (in this case, critical scholarship) changing a religion, or at least the understanding and interpretation of a religion. It seems the truth of what scholars like you point out eventually does require a response, or a recasting of the Christian understanding of their holy books. Like when Galileo concluded the earth revolved around the sun — at first resisted by the church, but eventually a truth the church came to accept and somehow incorporate. Among the best of the scholarly believers you debate (my favourite is Simon Gathercole, who always gives you a good argument), which would you say is most likely to end up on a similar path as you — from uncritical belief to some form of agnosticism/atheism? And if I could sneak another question in, I’ve always wondered if a younger Bart Ehrman, at the peak of his evangelical beliefs, would have supported a Trump-like president, like so many current ones do, despite his lack of traditional christian morality and other personal failings?
I’m afraid I really don’t know — on either question. 1. Most of them, I should hope. 🙂 2. I think I would be in tremendous conflict.
Hi Bart,
I just finished a historic novel beginning with the Crucifixion (but it was another man, not Jesus) and from that point on I change Acts to a historical novel that attempts to accurately tell of Paul’s journeys and when, where, and why he wrote his fourteen letters. But while I try to include every significant element in his letters and in Acts, with his letters and Acts dialogue verbatim, I additionally add narrative that is not in Acts that weaves in my alternate view of the Jesus message. It worked better than I expected and I think lends credibility to the Jane Roberts/Seth account of Jesus not being crucified. It is titled “And the Cock Crows: How Rome Buried the Jesus Message”. I am planning it’s release on Amazon in early November but I can email you a finished proof version today in Kindle or Epub. I’ll send Kindle format to you this evening but if you prefer Epub I can send that also.
If you have desire and wherewithal to review it I would much be interested in anything you find to be implausible or inaccurate within the book’s intent.
Dr Ehrman –
It seems that under this rubric, there would be various levels of analysis at which the label of errant/inerrant could apply. At the “every single datum is utterly correct” level, it seems he’s conceding the ground – by sidestepping on relevance. But at the macro-level, he’s claiming to retain inerrancy (which by definition means both consistent and true).
For ‘inerrant’ to apply to the entirety of the gospel accounts as a whole, one would need to bifurcate the definitional predicate of the term. So, ‘inerrant’ means “entirely consistent and accurate in the gist, and only irrelevant details could vary.” OK, so far so good.
But it then follows that Jesus’s last words must be irrelevant.
I don’t think that’s what he’d want to say, do you? Thanks as always!
NB – Perhaps you can convince him to guest post, and he can voice his own response!
Congratulations, professor! You seem to have achieved a status enjoyed by many popular non-Christian persons and institutions — you are an entity worthy of emulation. Striving to remain relevant despite their thinning ranks and waning influence, modern Christians copy the popular culture wherever they can. One need look no further than the Evangelical multi-media pep talks that suffice for sermons these days, or compare Christian albums with their secular contemporaries, to see the pattern. The big plate capitulation, of course, is the transfiguration of the Biblical Jesus into a sort of cosmic boyfriend/buddy. No longer able to command the masses, the church attempts to invite and validate the individual.
Listening to Mike Licona is light work. You may wish to reconsider inviting him to write for the people here. It would make for a futile venture (large thanks to you) for him to pass his cotton candy apologetic to this meat and potatoes crowd.
Having him guest post would be fascinating (and not in a judgemental way)!
Dr. Ehrman,
In your conversations with Mike Licona, have you ever asked him: “If we can agree that some of the stories in the Gospels are possibly non-historical (the cock crowing story, the dead saints shaken out of their graves story, etc..) isn’t it then also possible that all three Appearance Stories in the later three Gospels are non-historical? Maybe the detailed appearance stories in Matthew, Luke, and John are literary/theological embellishments of the bare-bones appearance accounts found in the Early Creed?”
Yes, more or less. He thinks those accounts can be “proven”
The biggest contradiction I can think of in the Gospels comes in the passion stories. In the Synoptics, Jesus and his disciples share the last supper before the arrest that night (Thursday). He is tried and crucified the next day (Friday).
John has the arrest come before the Passover meal. Jesus’ trial is on Thursday, and the crucifixion takes place Thursday evening, at the same moment the Passover lamb is slaughtered.
The scholarship I’m familiar with says that the historical contradiction is because the author of John wants to make a theological point about Jesus as sacrificial lamb. That’s more important to him than the (apparently) older tradition of crucifixion on Good Friday, so he changes the date.
I wonder how Mike would reconcile this.
I’m not sure he would. Others have lots of strategies, e.g., by arguing that John and Synoptics were working with different calendars…
OK, from a quick read, it seems to me that at lot of this discussion revolves around ones definition of “inerrancy.” I sense that maybe a straw man is being set up here. Does Mike himself really equate “inerrancy” with factuality? That’s where I see a straw man being set up.If Mike means that the obvious contradictions we see in the New Testament don’t detract from the basic message and meaning of the passages, what’s wrong with that?
The word inerrant literally means “without error.” If he wants to say that a text that has errors is without error, that’s my problem. he should just use a different term that doesn’t mean that — for example, “theologically reliable.”
“Mike and I completely agree that Matthew changed Jesus’ words. And that he had reasons to change it. And that he liked it better the way he gave the story than the way Mark did.”
But then coincidentally Luke comes up with the same reasons to change it and like’s his version better also.
Better by far is to see Matthew’s version as the original and Mark failing to understand why Jesus would tell his disciples not to bring a staff or wear sandals.
My evangelical friends are not interested in the details of biblical scholarship. They are only interested in simple God given truths. God says to do this and don’t do that. For them relativism is the spawn of the devil. They hold vehemently to biblical inerrancy because accepting contradictions and errors could erode their simple beliefs.
For Dr. Licona: Would the sky fall if Dr. Licona just said that the Gospel authors often describe different minor details, (such as how many times the cock crowed), but they agree on the major points, such as Jesus rose from the dead? Why is the doctrine of “inerrancy” so important to him?
Also what does Dr. Licona make of your “Jesus Before the Gospels” which explains contradictions by attributing them to changes during decades of oral storytelling before the Gospels were actually written?
For Dr. Siker: I am really struggling to understand how there can be truth outside of historical or scientific truth. And, if so, how does one know whether such “truth” is true? What if people disagree about what that truth is?
Surely it is true that I love my wife and that Dover Beach is a moving poem. But neither is open to historical or scientific verification.
Even among scholars it becomes difficult to admit you may be wrong based on what you believe,another words,gave up what is dear to you. Admission to someone else’s ideology becomes increasingly difficult to admit. It reminds me of going to court for a traffic ticket (speeding) . In Canada there is an option called,”guilty with an explanation”.It allows the person admits their wrong doing and maybe get a nice enough judge to reduce the fine.That’s why people try. They flood the court system based solely on this option.Most of the time the judge will grant a reduced fine based on your plea admission.Too bad well educated people,not just in religious issues,but in a lot of circumstances, cannot agree on evident issues.Admission becomes difficult.Truth is difficult to expound as human beings.Hence Pilate saying to Jesus,”What is truth”.I think it was historian,Paula Fredriksen, who said,” Theology without philosophy cannot exist”.Bart I confer with you,but convincing others,especially those in Christian circles,becomes an arduous task,especially since you have de-converted.I like Daniel Dennett’s comment when he said,” Time will change even the staunch believer,we must be patient.”I was in the Chicago Defender’s conference and they were ganging up on you.I wanted to come on stage on your side,but refrained.You did not need anyone.Good control.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
– Leonard Cohen
(I always thought there was a strong hint of inerrancy in Leonard Cohen’s gist.)
It seems like these discussions are as much wrapped up in psychology as they are scholarship. Sometimes I wonder how bad things would have to get in terms of discrepancies, contradictions, genocide (real or exaggerated), etc for some folks to acknowledge biblical problems.
I believe it was at the end of a debate between Mike Licona and Dale Martin, on whether or not the bible could be used historically to prove the resurrection, someone asked Martin how he could still believe given he was arguing against it. He said something like “It’s a miracle…a miracle I wake up every morning and believe it”. I found it cathartic to see someone who believes to frankly acknowledge the difficulties, and I wished the debate could have restarted from that point! Could I make a shameless request for a future Dale Martin guest post similar to what Judy Siker has been doing? 🙂
I understand now that the historical Jesus believed he was the Jewish Messiah, but can we determine WHY he thought he was the Jewish Messiah in the first place?
No, that would involve working out a detailed psychological evaluation, and we simply have not basis for doing it (though people have often tried! It was very common in the 19th century! And people still try today in our post-Freudian times. But we have no grounds for making teh assessment, other than pretty much guessing)
I know others must have thought this thought before, but don’t these modern Evangelicals realize that they are the new Mainline? Mike Licona can only liberalize so far, but his progeny can go a little further, and theirs further still. This is the story of the liberalization of the oldest Protestant denominations. As a former Evangelical, I started to realize this long ago.
Yes, it would be interesting to see the lay of the land in, say, 50 years.
I fear that the inconsistencies and contradictions in the narratives of the Evangelists are ‘pecata minuta’ compared to the flagrant historical errors and above all, scientific, not only of the OT – where some are ridiculous and cause great laughter – but also in the NT.
In these cases, the mantra of the evangelical apologists that the details and nuances, in which they believe that only errors are found, are not terribly important, since the details and technical questions are, many times, the whole thing.
And since you are going to invite Mr. Licona to explain to us in your blog how he can believe at the same time in two contrary things in its essence and foundation, to explain to us how the solves the serious scientific, historical and geographical errors of the OT and the NT.
To quote Orwell, isn’t this just “double think”?
That the differences existed from earliest times and were allowed to remain intact as the writings were circulated and collected into the canon and used for all the centuries tells me they had been acceptable. Why should the differences be so important now?
I suppose because now, as opposed to then, people think that every word in the Bible needs to be comletely inerrant.
Now isn’t that amazing…the massive effect the Bible had oh history without people being worried about conflicts in small details. Maybe the problem isn’t with the Bible, but with what a group of well-meaning but over-constraining men decided it had to be.
This discussion of inerrancy makes me think that the “old has become new again.” In 1983, after 8 years of fundamentalist college and seminary, I was heading into my last year of studies. While working on my thesis, I ran across the book “The Debate about the Bible: Inerrancy versus Infallibility” by Stephen T. Davis (1977). It changed my life. My views on inerrancy were seriously challenged. It prompted me to spend much of the fall semester researching the difference between inerrancy and infallibility. By the time the semester ended, I didn’t believe in inerrancy any more. (Not good at a fundamentalist seminary with one semester to go!)
It seems that both of the positions identified by Bart boil down to affirming that the “gist” of the Bible is what is inerrant. This is basically the “infallibility” position put forth by Davis. He says that “there are historical and scientific errors in the Bible, but I have found none on matters of faith and practice” (p. 115; cf. p. 118). I’ve been out of fundamentalist and evangelical circles for decades now, but I couldn’t avoid the conclusion that today’s evangelicals are repackaging “infallibility” in the name of “inerrancy.” They want to use the word “inerrant,” but they really mean “infallible.” Davis’ book was so powerful to me at the time because it showed–by comparing scripture to scripture–that there were errors in the Bible. That would seem to preclude calling it “inerrant.”
If people want to call the color of the sky “red,” I guess they can. But it’s blue to the rest of us. What these evangelicals are doing it a word game. Two purported stories of an event that disagree substantially with each other cannot both be “inerrant.”
I’m an atheist now (I guess I’m an example of the “slippery slope”!), so I don’t subscribe to either position. But I think Davis was at least being more honest about the situation. He said inerrancy was wrong. So, he tried to posit infallibility as an alternative. Based on Bart’s report from the conference, modern evangelicals seem disingenuous to me. I’m glad that evangelicals are applying modern, critical methods to their study of the Bible. But I don’t understand how you can admit to errors in the Bible and still call it “inerrant.” It’s a contradiction in terms.
I think that you are doing a great job by informing the public and I appreciate you for that. Sometimes I wonder why Christian would say that Jesus is God and so on. I know that the Bible doesn’t say that Jesus is God but like you said in your debates that Jesus is God in a sense. What sense? I think know the answer to question. I will get to that later. I need your feed back on these few verses that help me to understand that Jesus is not God. In Proverbs 8:22-31 those verses help me to see that Jesus was part of God’s creations and so forth. The other verses that help me to see that Jesus was not was this found in 1John 4:3,15. Those verses help to see me that we in no way cannot denied that it was Jesus(not God) came into the flesh. If christian claims that iJesus is God to me they are a hypocrite and false. Like you said we cannot have it both ways.
When you said above, “and that he had reasons to change it. And that he liked it better the way he gave the story than the way Mark did. And that he thought it was an improvement”, I immediately thought to myself that a story of Jesus rising from the dead would be an improvement over Jesus being executed (and staying dead). I wonder where those who try to walk this line actually draw it? What happens when the “gist” could be improved based on the writers notion of what the gist is or should have been?
I’ve heard several people (Craig Evans comes immediately to mind) in debates with you, Dr. Ehrman, suggest that, regardless of the discrepancies, we haven’t lost anything in terms of the real message, but I don’t think that’s true because once acknowledged (the contradictions, discrepancies, etc.), we have lost the certainty, the absolute reliability, the 100% trust in what is written. Given the importance of the material, not to mention the age and far-fetched nature of the events, I would have imagined that it was the alleged certainty of the text that helped hold it all together, a integral component to the whole.
I mean neither Paul nor any of the Nt authors thought the Nt was inerrant scripture whilst they were writing it, it was jesus’s words ands what he did which had divine authority, so why not just say that today? If its Jesus and his teachings which have the authority, scripture can be picked apart to help us better understand those teachings. With this “inerrant” view it seems rather like there’s a piety forcing them to say it
Yup, it’s a later claim about these texts, not one they make themselves.
I’m happy to agree with Mike et al up to a point, that not every deviation from straightforward accounting of facts constitutes an “error”. Figures of speech being an obvious example. If we know that the phrase “forty days” was in common use for an indeterminate amount of time, then it would take a particularly extreme brand of fundamentalist to insist that the period in question could not be a day longer or shorter. From there, you can extend the argument to progressively less clear cases. Up to a point, anyway. How liberally evangelicals are willing to define error is the least of my worries, but sooner or later you are faced with discrepencies (internal or external) that really matter.
Is it fair to say that the “Peter denied Jesus six times” idea has *ever* been a “standard reconciliation”? As far as I know it was promoted in just one book. And it seems to me the reason it is so laughable is in part because it overlooks the perfectly obvious common sense way to reconcile the accounts, in favour of gratuitous convolution. If the cock crows twice in quick succession, with just seconds passing between one crow and the next, you can count it as either one crow or two, as you wish. If Bart Ehrman speaks two sentences with a pause in between, does he speak once or twice?
Good point. I don’t know how many books it’s in. I used to hear it a lot when I was a fundamentalist. On the other hand, I have to say I’ve never heard the theory of gratuitoius convolution. ANd I don’t recall every hearing a cock to that!
Dear Erman,
As you know, Jesus appears to the Eleven at the end of the Gospel of Luke. In John, Jesus first appears to ten people, then to eleven, including Thomas. Mike Licona argues here that Luke “presses” the appearances in John, thus presenting both appearances as one appearance. Do you think this explanation is reasonable?When evaluated within the framework of Ancient Time’s Morality, it made sense to me. I would like to know your comment.
I don’t think John had access to Luke so I don’t think he was condensing a story in front of him. There were lots of versions of the story floating around and Luke and John simply represent two of them.