(7 votes, average: 4.71 out of 5)
Loading...On Saturday 18th July 2015 I held a kind of radio debate with Timothy J. McGrew, a conservative Christian apologist and professor of Philosophy at Western Michigan University. He’s also the author of The Foundations of Knowledge and Internalism and Epistemology. It was a two-part back-and-forth on “Unbelievable,” a weekly program hosted by Justin Brierley, which airs on UK Premier Christian Radio. I taped the interview from the station’s London studio.
The debate was on the topic: Can We Trust the Gospels?” Here Part One.
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Dr. Ehrman, I have already watched your debate with Ned Flanders. I was immediately put off by the fact that Mr. Flanders refused to own up to the fact of his confirmation bias. It’s pretty obvious that he presumes that the Gospels are accurate historical accounts (“prima facie”), and he is primarily concerned with dismissing any and all evidence to the contrary. Moreover, his accusation that you have an agenda is clearly a projection considering that his agenda is rather blatant.
Very enjoyable, though it didn’t get far in terms of specifics being discussed!
First: I think “In Memory of the Messiah” would have been a great title for your book. Much better than “Jesus Before the Gospels.”
About the importance of establishing whether someone believes in “inerrancy”… I was reminded of something else: how conservative scholars responded (or didn’t really respond) to “How Jesus Became God.” As I’ve said before, I think a person who believes Jesus really *was* God *couldn’t help* thinking some of his disciples must have seen it while he was alive.
About trusting the Gospels… I’m sorry the discussion didn’t get to the *major* inconsistencies: the irreconcilable birth narratives, and the exalted role Jesus claims for himself in John (and only in John).
This guy should stick to philosophy…or first take a couple of courses in historiography.
Off topic Bart. Just want to say it a beautiful morning here in Colorado. Beautiful day here in the USA ! Haven’t forgot about you Mr!! You work hard and let this be a sign to you.. I support this blog, and you !! the foot prints of my mind and heart are at work. Please someone Google ” thunder ” perfect mind.. I am Zeus”s heart! I am Zeus”s love ! That is who I pray to Mr. Erhman.. Jesus and his mystery is a mystery!
Have a wonderful weekend ! Will keep following your blog !! Will keep support you!!
Haven’t forgot about you Bart !!! Again it is a gorgeous day here in Colorado! In the USA !!! Just want to say, the footprints of my mind and heart are at work! Jesus’s secret sayings and mysteries will be uncovered! The footprints of my mind and heart will be as righteous as yours ! You are a teacher to me and don’t even know it ! I have seen your undergraduate and graduate syllabus. Would love to attend your class one day ! But I have logical reasoning and common sense! What’s the acceptance rate there around 30%? With that being said I will preach my house steps. ( line 33 gospel of Thomas) With righteous heart and mind ! Zeus is who I pray to. I am Zeus’s heart! I am Zeus’s love ! I am Zeus’s memory! Don’t give up ! Because I am not ! Nor should you ! And by the way did you add a new feature to correct your paragraph structure and punctuation etc ? I always post in hurry. Sorry about that ! Again, have a wonderful weekend ! Will keep supporting your blog ! Will keep supporting you!!
Bart – you were the most convincing. Looking forward to part 2.
What a bizarre discussion.
Thanks for posting the debate.
Thanks Bart for the post. And, thanks for being so patient throughout the discussion. I have just one or two observations if you will: 1) this sounds somewhat like a philosopher of science debating a Cosmologist on the details of Cosmology. As you remarked during the discussion, sometimes it sounded like you talked past each other–too often the case with these types of debates.
@11:33 “… that’s really; it’s a kind of a non-issue for me …” (McGrew): I believe this sets the tone for the issue betwixt the discussants, and perhaps, where the sometimes talking past each other occurs.
Now, I agree that from the outset you were right to hold his hand to the fire on this. In spite of his refusal to address it directly–though it becomes obvious later what is his stance–this is the main issue. If one holds the Bible to be inerrant–whatever that means–then one needs to understand what one’s interlocutor understands by that term. Claiming it’s a non-issue perhaps does not make sense, if we hold that this is a pivotal issue.
2) Why do we continue to compare the need to confirm the authorship of Plato or Thucydides or Herodotus, to that of the names accredited as authors to the Gospels? Whether or not Thucydides’ account of the Peloponnesian Wars was true or not perhaps has little or no bearing on the destiny of my supposed immortal soul. However, if John claimed that Jesus said “Ye are of your father the devil…,” I believe we need to know if this was the case or not.
Lastly, well said: @32:53 “… I’m not sure how well read you are in ancient history…”
I look forward to part 2. Cheers.
OT: There may not be anyone here who’d be interested in this – that’s fine with me! Just thought I’d mention it, during, um, “Holy Week”…
I have a work of fiction posted online, titled “The Sword and the Cross,” with this Summary: “An involuntary time traveler finds himself destined to play a role in the origin of Christianity.” It’s novella-length – 32,000 words, including the Introduction and Afterword.
There’s no charge for reading and/or downloading it. And for anyone who doesn’t have some form of Ad Block, the website is commercial-free.
Here’s the link: http://archiveofourown.org/works/5463728/chapters/12630371
And here’s the explanation. My hobby, when I feel the urge, is writing fan fiction. Between 1999 and 2003, I wrote more than thirty fics based on “Highlander: The Series.” I had a series of my own, with plans for several more stories – including this one, in which hero Duncan MacLeod’s time travel would be part of a larger story arc.
I drifted away from it – partly because I became involved with another fandom, but also because I knew the still-planned “Highlander” fics would be more ambitious than anything I’d previously attempted.
I resumed writing them in 2013, and eventually completed the arc. I was glad I’d waited, because what I’ve learned from Bart was a big help in writing my “origin of Christianity” fic (titled, in my series, “The Third Day”). Back in 2003, I’d thought Jesus had only one brother, James! Nevertheless, my story is pure fiction.
I recently decided to post the “origin of Christianity” fic – just that one, still featuring Duncan MacLeod – in a category for stories involving real historical personages. This version has a new title because I made changes so it would work better as a standalone.
The story isn’t humorous (far from it!), but readers might be amused by the contrast with those pious “protagonist encounters Jesus” yarns that have given us films like “Ben-Hur” and “The Robe.” I’m not making any claims for the quality of my writing; but the approach is…different.
And here’s one “spoiler.” I’d gotten a kick out of Bart’s saying he prefers Salvador Dali’s “Last Supper” to Leonardo da Vinci’s, because I’ve always felt the same way. So I had MacLeod reflect that he’d preferred Dali’s version to Leonardo’s…while he was at the actual Last Supper!
I listened to your debate with McGrew, and it’s fairly clear to me that he believes the Bible is inerrant, and his definition of inerrancy includes errors, which only appear to errors but are really reconcilable or so trivial as to be unworthy of criticism. I wince at the thought of him justifying the John Gospel, and explaining how Jesus came to speak like a Greek philosopher. Would it be like the illiterate Mohammed speaking classic Arabic poetry provided by Allah via the Angel Gabriel? Does McGrew really believe that Jesus could walk around Galilee, stating, “I am the resurrection and the life. He that….etc” without being clobbered by the early peasant version of a Donald Trump follower?
Just listened to both of those Bart.
McGrew seems like an incredibly frustrating chap, his main tactics seem to be evasion and flat-out denial. The worst Christian apologists in my opinion are the ones that are trained in philosophy. They seem to think it’s nothing more than a handy playbook for rhetorical tricks in order to impress an undiscerning audience.
The thing that saves these programmes in my opinion is Justin Brierley, who seems to be highly intelligent and charming. He seems able to immediately grasp the point you are making and to be helpful in giving you the opportunity to extemporise on it, despite the fact that he presumably disagrees with you.
Hope you manage to do another of these if you manage to make it to the UK this year. Any prospect of you fitting in a speaking engagement while you’re here, or are your visits strictly for pleasure? 🙂
I”ve occasionally given lectures at Kings College, but have nothing else planned. I’ll be doing Unbelievable in a couple of weeks.
Prof Ehrman
Excellent performance on your part although I have to say very frustrating to listen to. I don’t know Tim McGrew’s work and I hesitate to accuse anyone of bad faith but his performance strikes me as fundamentally dishonest. He claims he wants to treat the gospels like other ancient sources and yet he obviously privileges them as scripture. He wants to come off as objective somehow but his whole approach is clearly motivated by a prior faith position. A couple times he ascribed positions to you that are the opposite of your clearly stated views. I thought your opening question about inerrancy was spot on. Why is it so hard to get a straight answer out of these apologists?
S
Yes, I find it frustrating too.
What is clear from the debate is that even where you agree with McGrew, he does not want appear to agree with you. How do you feel about the debate? I felt stressed and frustrated just listening to it. I don’t know if his “apparent dishonesty” is intentional or only a subconscious compulsion. It seemed to me he honestly thought his argument that the Gospels are not anonymous was valid because he re-defined “anonymity” to mean “not formal anonymity.” So, he seems to be arguing against his own definition of “anonymous” instead of arguing against the usual definition and the way you used it. Likewise, with “extensive evidence.” Why not just say “evidence”? He seems fine with representing the evidence as extensive, because he has given “extensive” his own idiosyncratic meaning of “calibrated with” in order to artificially bolster his argument. Shees! “Strawman.” He won’t even state his point of view to argue against, and then when you address a point of view that Evangelicals and Fundamentalists actually DO HAVE, he moves the goalposts, and calls it a strawman argument. And then with his example of other people quoting passages without naming an author. What does that have to do with the issue of attribution?? We know these other authors are quoting a book without naming the author, because we can compare the quote to the passage in the book, right? But with the Gospels, the attribution by Papias to Matthew and Mark includes passages which do not correspond to passages in these Gospels, as I understand it from your books. You’ve covered this ground many times in your books. Argh! 🙂 Are you as frustrated as me? You have a lot of patience, Professor Ehrman.
BTW, I am enjoying your book on memory. Looking forward to more posts about it.
I felt pretty frustrated by it, frankly.
Speaking of debates with Inerrantists, I have a quick technical question. I’ve been discussing with an Inerrantist the issue of whether Jairus’ daughter was dead and whether Jairus was aware of it when he first approached Jesus to request a healing. In Mark and Luke, the girl is described as “dying” / “at the point of death”, and seemingly Jairus is not aware that she has died until his friends come to inform him later. In Matthew, there is no narration of the friends coming to inform Jairus, and when Jairus first speaks to Jesus, it seems as though he already knows she *is* dead (ἁρτι ἑτελεθτησεν). My inerrantist friend is appealing to the greek in Matthew being somewhat ambiguous. Is this just a case of my friend running words down to oblivion to render any meaning suspect? Would you say it’s clear enough in Koine that Matthew has portrayed the girl as already dead and Jairus being aware of it?
No, the Greek is unambiguous. The girl had already died. Aorist tense, strengthened by the αρτι. Not an ambiguous statement.
Just like I thought. Thanks.
Infuriating debate partner. Not sure how you remain calm. He kept on accusing you of a straw man argument. Not sure that there is much point in debating with evangelical Christians.
Hello, Dr. Ehrman
I was wondering what your thoughts were on 3 points that Tim raised in this debate (parts 1 and 2).
1. That you can’t infer that just because there is no affirmative statement that no one was in the room with Pilate and Jesus, no one was actually in the room with them, and that instead guards were likely there and heard what was going on and so constituted eyewitnesses for later gospel writings.
2. That Jesus’s followers were servants (e.g., Joanna) in high Roman society and further adduced eyewitness testimony (i.e., reconciling the trial story in John with Matthew and Luke).
3. That John is historically reliable because Irenaeus was a disciple of Polycarp who in turn was a disciple of John the Evangelist.
1. Zero evidence for that. 2. Zero evidence 3. Easily shown to be problematic (NB: if Polycarp were a disciple of John, why in Polycarp’s sole surviving writing does he quote the books of the NT extensively, but *never* the Gospel of John???)
Still thinking about book titles… “In Memory of the Messiah” would have been great, because it was a play on words, *and* didn’t indicate (wrongly) that everything you were writing about took place “before the Gospels.”
But other titles… I still think “How Jesus Became God” should have had the word “God” in quotes. If someone were to write, say, an article about my city, and title it “How Kathy Sheehan Became Mayor,” a reader unfamiliar with the city would surely understand it as meaning a person by that name actually is – or at some point, was – Mayor!
But what I’m really puzzling over is the title of the rebuttal book, “How God Became Jesus.” Turning your title around may have seemed like a neat idea. But if one really thinks about it, their title doesn’t imply that they intended to reject your explanation of how early Christians came to regard Jesus as divine, and present an alternative. It implies that they intended to offer “evidence” that he was a preexisting divine Being who incarnated in Jesus – a completely different goal!
But the book *is* about what took place before the Gospels. That’s its central focus.
I t seems to be essentially impossible to debate someone on an issue point when they cannot allow themselves to freely address the exact issue because of deeply held philosophical or religious views.
All I kept thinking was, “Bart must really, really like his charities.”
Yeah, I kept thinking that too….
Hey Bart 🙂
Yeah, listening to dodgy McGrew made me think that you must really love your charities, too, lol.
I’ve listened to three of your debates now: this one with McGrew, your debate with Justin Bass (a debate I attended), and your debate with Kyle Butt. I liked Butt a lot more than the other two. I can’t imagine he would have any trouble giving a straightforward answer to a question as to his view of inerrancy.
Who has *your* favorite fundamentalist interlocutor been, Bart?
Many thanks! 🙂
I think Justin Bass is a good guy.
Oh sure, Bass seemed nice enough and all. And, I *did* get a kick out of his labeling Matthew 27:52-53 as the “zombie apocalypse”, lol. But, I thought Butt gave you more of a run for your money.
I also very much enjoyed *your* argument in favor of the historicity of Acts. I don’t agree with that argument any more than you do. But, it *is* helpful to see the other guy’s case made so well. I hope you will share more of these devil’s advocate arguments with us! 🙂
This is my summary of the debate: “I think it’s possible to reconcile just about everything, if you work hard at it.” (B. E. at 42:15).
Listened to this debate on unbelievable when it came out. All I can say is this guy seemed liked he had a chip on his shoulder, he went after Bart pretty hard. Stop being so nice! Keep up the good work.
This is very interesting and reminds me of my many discussions in church Bible classes. My two cents:
1. I don’t think you skipped class the day that “mechanical inspiration” was debunked at Moody Bible College.
2. I admire your ability to stay calm and not get too frustrated.
3 I admire your ability to stay clear.
4. I admire your ability to understand and translate Dr. McGrew’s points as he tends to wander around in rather esoteric history,
5. The two main areas of discussion were rather predictable: Were the Gospels written by reliable eyewitnesses or colleagues of eyewitnesses and how significant are the contradictions in the Gospels? I was not very persuaded by Dr. McGrew’s contention that the Gospels were ascribed to authors much earlier than the end of the second century, but we just have lost the evidence for this. I also was not persuaded by his argument that most of the contradictions that occur are of little significance. Taken together there are just too many of them and that is the main point.
I look forward to the second debate.
Wow, what a difficult listen. This is a good lesson in how NOT to do history. It becomes obvious that Tim believes in biblical inerrancy, which is why he wouldn’t answer the question at first. He couldn’t say he doesn’t because he does. And he couldn’t say he does because that would compromise his ability to appear objective. It took me a little while but when he told Bart that Polycarp not naming the authors wasn’t evidence that he didn’t know them, I got it. His approach is to take all traditions as accurate unless there is enough evidence otherwise. The problem with this is evidence is not weighed equally. Any evidence that what he already believes could be *possible* is given a higher value than evidence that it is not *probable*. So where Bart sees zero evidence that anyone called the gospels by the names we know them before the late second century, Tim sees evidence that it’s possible they did and concludes it’s probable. And where Bart sees it almost impossible that Jesus could have shut down the whole temple cult for practical reasons, Tim is able to imagine a way that it could be possible and concludes it must have happened as described in John. This is not how to study history. Sorry for my long post.
This was stressful right from the start. Tim acted as though you were trying to trap him with the inerrancy question, so he immediately went on the defense. He was hyper-defensive the entire time. I’d like to know, was he correct that there was only 1 gate into the temple? Could Jesus have temporarily brought selling in the temple to a halt?
There were several gates leading into the temple.
Yikes. Ditto to all the comments above about how frustrating that was. First time in a longgg time I’ve listened to an Evangelical debate someone – now I remember why I stopped -_-
Dr. Ehrman, you have stated in the past that Jews in ancient Palestine were not typically literate. Accordingly, you have argued that the Aramaic speaking followers of Jesus were probably not capable of composing the New Testament gospels. However, this article published by the New York Times suggests that literacy was considerably more widespread among ancient Jews than once thought. What are your thoughts, particularly as it relates to the possibility that 1st century Palestinian Jewish tradesmen could have composed the gospel narratives in their primitive forms?
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/12/world/middleeast/new-evidence-onwhen-bible-was-written-ancient-shopping-lists.html
But read carefully what it says. Of the 100,000 Judeans, hundreds could actually read. Then work out the percentages!
I know this debate was 3 yrs ago, but I just recently stumbled upon it! Very interesting!
Tim McGrew made a couple decent arguments, but he clearly has a theological agenda to harmonize and privilege the NT. Further, like many Christian Apologists, he seems very angry and pompous. I viewed some of his other Youtube lectures and interviews and he appears to be on a Crusade Against You and other Atheists and Skeptics!
Any plans for another debate with Tim McGrew?
No, not really. I’m afraid I wasn’t aware of his work when we debated, and thought his arguments rather strange.