Loading...After all the tangents and side-tracks, I can return now to my reminiscences of my relationship with Bruce Metzger. Perhaps I should say a few things about his personality, as I perceived and experienced it.
I think everyone who knew him would say that he was a true Christian gentleman. He was respectful of all people, polite to a fault, and cordial. But he was not someone that anyone became intimate with. I am absolutely positive that I came to be closer to him than any PhD student he supervised in his 40 plus years teaching at Princeton Theological Seminary. He as much as told me so. I knew his wife and his two sons (a bit); he invited my family to Christmas dinner; for several weeks I lived with him and his wife in their home. But there was always a kind of distance to him as well. He never let down his hair. The best I can put it is that he was cordial rather than warm and intimate.
He was a shy man. You would not know that from his public persona, but in personal contact he was shy and was not all that easy to talk with. We had a joke about it among the graduate students. One of my friends was in his home turning in a late paper; they made some small talk; there was a silence; and out of the blue, Metzger pointed to a grandfather clock in the room and said, “I *made* that clock!” For years, whenever my friend and I would be talking and there was a pause, one of us would say, “I *made* that clock.”
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Bruce Metzger is the author of several books including The Early Versions of the New Testament and The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, And Restoration.
When Metzger said “Well, *that* should be a very slim volume” did he mean there’s not enough material or that people would take it the wrong way so keep it short?
He meant there were not enough data. So I disagreed with him!
You are very good at debating. I will give credit when it is due…..and that is not often!!
Dr. Ehrman,
Thank you fo sharing your insights on your mentor Dr. Metzger. I must say that I enjoy the ‘personal’ touch you put into your blogging and writing. I have just recently began reading your ‘popular’ works. “Misquoting Jesus” had to be the fastest I’ve ever finished a non-fiction book (I’m a notoriously slow reader; must be some latent ADD 😉 ). I am now about 2/3 of the way through “Jesus Interrupted.” As someone who was in the same boat you were in (conservative evangelical), I must say that I find the vast majority of your argumentation persuasive and have begun adapting my view of scripture accordingly. While I too am familiar with many of the evangelical counter-arguments for your position, it really comes down to one thing: Which view of scripture seems most plausible (of course that will be determined in large part by one’s presuppositions). If one is inclined to believe in an infallible and inerrant bible, then one is willing to live with some of the cognitive dissonance that goes with it.
Anyway, just wanted to say that I am enjoying your works and look forward to more from your pen. Did I read correctly somewhere that you are thinking of a popular book that addresses how Jesus ‘became’ God? If so, I look forward to it.
Thank you,
Carl
Yup, that’s the next book. I’m glad you’ve enjoyed the others so far!
I have been very moved by your Metzger series. Thanks for sharing so much about him and yourself. Being a retired psychiatrist, I have been very blessed to have had a couple of very similar mentors.
As I read your frequent blogs, along side your New Testament textbook, I find myself becoming progressively more perplexed and confused. Clearly, New Testament Gospel authors, and their subsequent editors, frequently made up stuff. For example, someone, in order to refute the theology of docetism, made up that Jesus sweat blood. Someone else, in order to confirm an Old Testament prophecy even if that prophecy had been mistranslated, made up the “virgin” birth. And so on and so forth ….
Hence, my perplexity and confusion: Considering the importance of the subject, why didn’t the Gospel authors and editors focus more on getting their writing as historically correct as possible? Did the Gospel authors and editors think it was okay just to make up stuff to support various theological positions? Was this part of the literary genre of the time, sort of like us giving considerable literary license to movie makers? Why would the writers of such noble ethics make stuff up? Wasn’t the life of Jesus itself rich enough that it does not need such fictional enrichment? Did these Gospel authors/editors/readers consider this to be “fraud” similar to the fraud of ascribing false authorship that you so thoroughly described in one of you recent books?
As always, thanks so much for your help and your considerable contributions to my understanding of early Christianity. Keep up the good and important work. I am tired of not getting any meaningful answers from churches.
These are great questions — but not easily answered. The short (and inadequate) answer is that it appears that for most early Christians, historical accuracy, as we define it, was not the most important thing. The “truth” was not confined to history and was more important than historical data….
How odd that historical accuracy was not the most important thing. People have often told me that the “Holy Spirit” inside them is more important than historical issues.