(15 votes, average: 4.93 out of 5)
Loading...In my previous post, and a number of times elsewhere, I mentioned my mentor at Princeton Theological Seminary, Bruce Metzger. Over the years I’ve been asked a number of times why, if he was my teacher, I don’t agree with him on so many things. Usually this comes as an accusation more than as a genuine query. Here’s a reworking of a response I gave to the issue about ten years ago.
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Prof. Metzger was not just a brilliant scholar but also a deeply committed Christian, an ordained Presbyterian minister, who believed in the inspiration of the Bible and in the literal truth of the statements found in the Christian creeds, about the incarnation, the virgin birth, the resurrection of Jesus, and so on.
Behind the question are usually the unexpressed statements: he was more learned than you, he knew what you do, he was your teacher, but he disagreed with you. What’s wrong with you that you would disagree with your own teacher??
It’s a good question and it deserves a straightforward answer. The people who ask it are all, to my knowledge, conservative evangelical Christians who find two of my long-held views particularly unacceptable:
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Hello Dr Erhman,
You say: “That since we do not have lots of early manuscripts of the New Testament (let alone the originals) there are places where we cannot know for sure what the authors originally wrote”
Why would you want them, or than to satisfy your own curiosity, or maybe for new material to write another book?
I ask this because what difference would this really make to convince a non-follower of Christ as yourself Dr. Ehrman, if all those conditions were actually met?
That is to say, would having extant eyewitness gospels depicting a Jesus who proclaimed himself the unique Son of God, a Jesus declaring to forgive our sins by dying on the cross, and who was witnessed by many to be resurrected from his death, actually convert you to be a follower of Christ?
I suspect not in the least. Wouldn’t you just easily say eyewitnesses testimonies are not always reliable and never truly objective? Which is entirely true of course.
And for the resurrection appearances, would you not just simply dismiss those extant eyewitness appearances as wishful thinking hallucinations (say, on the order of the Mary appearances), or simply reject those accounts as unhistorical miracle claims?
Regards,
Bill R.
Personally I want to know what the words of the authors of the New Testament were for the same reason I want to know whether book 24 goes all the way back to the earliest form of the Odyssey (it doesn’t. Sigh…), and what the words of Hamlet originally were (HUGE debates and it makes a big difference) or which ending Dickens originally gave to Great Expectations (we know the answer, and I don’t like it! I’m all for the happy ending, by temperament). It’s nothing that matters for my faith. Paul does say 500 people saw Jesus alive at one time. I don’t believe it even though he says it. (I don’t believe 500 saw him and I don’t believe he was raised). The reason I emphasis that we can’t know what the authors wrote is that evangelicals often base their views and faith on the belief we can, and they need to be shown that it just ain’t true. But that’s not the whole problem with conservative Christian beliefs; it’s just a slice of it.
The 500 people seeing “Jesus” is interesting because there are no specifics in 1 Cor 15 for any of the resurrection appearances. If Jesus followers remained in Jerusalem after his crucifixion, it can be claimed they saw Jesus soon after (because he was resurrected or because he survived his crucifixion). If most or all of those followers fled Judea after Jesus was arrested, then the appearances should be of a totally different character. For example, his “appearance to Cephas” could have been a dream that Peter had upon returning to Galilee. If William Hartmann’s theory that Paul’s account was due to a very large meteorite, then Paul didn’t see Jesus either. More importantly, it means that people were seeing meteorites and dreams and saying those are resurrection appearances. Since Paul doesn’t say when or where these 500 people had their experience, it could easily be that 500 people at night saw a very impressive meteor and then asserted that it was an appearance of Jesus. Undoubtedly, people will read 1 Cor 15 and assume these 500 people saw the body of Jesus with crucifixion wounds. But that is projecting a meaning into the text that it doesn’t say.
Thank you, Dr. Ehrman, for your candid and personal post. There seems to be something with fundamentalist beliefs that resist the idea that successors might improve upon their mentors. For apologists who deny evolution, they often refer to Darwin, as if refuting his claims could refute the observations of modern scientists. In the same vein, if your mentor believed something contrary, of course you must believe the same as he did! You must base your views on your mentor!
If Metzger was correct in his beliefs and is experiencing some kind of afterlife, I can only imagine he is applauding your efforts.
Having said that, I do have a question: where did you and Metzger disagree the most (apart from final conclusions on faith)?
I thought there were a lot more contradictions and forgeries in the Bible than he did, and that it did not present a unified narrative. (When I started in my program, though, I was more conservative than he!)
Really enjoyed this one, Bart.
Sent a copy to a very knowledgeable, young earth, evangelical friend. He believes in biblical inerrancy and what I consider fantastical interpretations going all the way back to Gen. 1 & 2.
I also posted an additional reminder of the fact that Amazon published my review of your highly instructive book Armageddon on my most recent, Nov. 19 Blog post at historyhighjacker.com.
It’s entitled “Israel-Hamas War Seen Through Freud’s Distorting Rear-View Mirror”.
Hope you get a chance to read it.
Thanks! I’m going to be posting some excerpts from the book in a week or so, dealing with the history of Christian Zionism.
I find the idea that everyone must agree with everything their teacher taught to be absurd. I’ve had lots of wonderful teachers in my life, some of whom influenced me profoundly, but never have I had the thought that I must abide by all of their opinions, ideas, and teachings. Do people really expect that doctoral students will agree with their mentors on everything? What would even be the point of becoming a scholar if you’re only allowed to adhere to the beliefs of your Doktorvater?
If Peter and Paul where leaders of different branches of the church, why do we not have textual variants in Gal 2:7-14 that witness to those divisions? If later schisms in the church have left their mark in the mss, and if the text was more fluid in the early period (as you claim), then surely we would expect the supposed division between Paul’s camp and Peter’s camp to have also left its mark. Why are there no variants that absolve Peter of blame or intensify his error? And if Acts glosses over the conflict between Paul and the Jerusalem church leaders, why do we not have textual variants in Gal 2:11-14 that do the same? The stability of the text is surely evidence that the church was never divided between a Paul camp and a Peter camp, or there was less meddling with the text than you seem to imply. No?
I’m not sure what you mean by differnt branches of the church. Do you mean like “denominations”? I don’t think such things existed. If you mean that Paul and Peter each had groups of people who thought he was right and the other was wrong, then I don’t see how that can possibly be historically correct, given all the writings we have (going down into the third/fourth century). Why didn’ts scribes change the texts accordingly? Well, have you read Eldon Epps book The Theological Tendencies of Codex Bezae Cantagrigiensis in Acts? That ‘would be the place to start. MASSIVE internal changes, though, were never made for theological reasons. Only occasional ones. Our surviving mss of Galatians, of course were produced long after these were central issues.
I don’t understand your reply, particularly the third sentence, and I don’t know whether you have read me carefully enough. You have argued that controversies in the church produced textual variants. You also believe that there was ongoing controversy between Paul and Peter/James. You have also said that the text was more fluid in the early years than it was later (and I think everyone agrees with that). So why did that fluidity not result in textual variants that sided with Paul or with Peter? And if, as you believe, Acts glossed over deep divisions between Paul and the Jerusalem apostles, why are there no textual variants in Gal 2:11-14 that likewise tried to gloss over those divisions?
Yes, I have read much of Epp’s book on theological tendencies of Bezae. This codex is a case in point because it has anti-women textual variants and anti-Judaic textual variants, but no textual variants that put down Peter or James or Paul.
Why has the supposed conflict between Paul and the Jerusalem church leaders left no trace in the textual variants, or indeed in the early church writings (consider how Clement, for example, commends both Peter and Paul in the same breath).
I’m not sure if you’re read my book Orthodox Corruption, but one of my major points is that variants *often* don’t occur where modern readers would expect them to.
IN any event, my main point is that scribes were typically changing their texts, when they did change them, was because of pressing issues in their own day. At the time these changes were being made, the conflicts between Peter and Paul were not a major concern splitting Christian groups, except those very much on the margins, not ones affecting proto-orthodox scxribes (the ones whose copies we now have).
In a forthcoming article I argue that nearly all the large deliberate changes to Paul’s letters concerned who should have authority in the churches. I also show that at least one of those changes dates to the first century. In general, variants are a lot older than the oldest surviving manuscripts that have them. It has been shown that most singular readings were already in the exemplar that the scribe used. My point is that if the Paul-Peter split was real we should expect there to be variants in surviving mss that reflect that controversy, even though we have no mss that date to the time of the controversy. Variants outlive the controversies that create them. How long did the Paul-Peter/James split last? Are you suggesting that the Paul-Peter/James split was over before Paul’s letters circulated?
No, I’m saying it took place principally on the margins by the end of the first century or so, so far as we can tell, and that like lots of other views (Gnostic, Marcionite, name it) it did not apparently affect the proto-orthodox scribes who left us our texts starting a couple of centuries after that.
You wrote: “No, I’m saying it took place principally on the margins by the end of the first century or so, so far as we can tell, and that like lots of other views (Gnostic, Marcionite, name it) it did not apparently affect the proto-orthodox scribes who left us our texts starting a couple of centuries after that.”
I think you are saying that the Paul-Jerusalem split was important until the end of the first century, after which it was on the margins. So why did this split, if real, not affect the manuscripts that were copied during the first century? Or, if it did effect the manuscripts, why have those mss left no trace in the surviving mss?
Are you saying that the Paul-Jerusalem split did not produce variants in Gal 2, or are you saying that such variants were somehow suppressed so that only a consistent text survived?
We don’t have any manuscripts copied during the first century, so we don’t know if it affected them. If it affected some, it doesn’t mean those were widely copied afterward. It is widely thought, for example, that John 21 was added to John in the first century or so, or that the “unequally yoked” passage in 2 Corinthians was, and others. You may not agree with these particular judgments, but they would show definitively that the states of texts in the first century are not necessarily replicated in mss surviving from centuries later.
The same can be said, e.g., of Marcionite copies of Paul, and Valentinian copies, etc. These were made in the second century, but it’s very difficult indeed to see any traces of them.
And not for want of trying. I very much wanted to write a second volume called The Heretical Corruption of Scripture, but I could only find a couple of examples after looking at every textual variant of the NT recorded in Nestle-Aland; Tischendorf; von Soden; etc.
Great statement. In regards to that last point you mentioned about 2nd Peter: Percentage wise, out of all the New Testament scholars how many of them do you think also share your opinion that it is NOT from Peter?
Apart from very conservative evangelical scholars, I can’t think of anyone at all who considers it to have been written by Peter.
I find the initial argument strange. Why should a student agree with his teacher? In my view a teacher’s job is not to tell students what to think, but how to think. A teacher helps students understand context, scholarship, relationships, critical thinking skills. I would not think that any teacher judges their success on how many students agree with their teacher’s views, but how many students can ask questions their teacher never thought to ask.
Thanks, Dr, Ehrman, for your work and for sharing your knowledge on this blog.
I respectfully disagree with you about how good the question is. To me, it is not a thoughtful one, as your answer courteously explains. All one need do is ask whether anyone agrees with all of one’s teachers, even those who disagree with one another. That seems impossible.
Dr. Ehrman,
Regarding you 1st unease (“Why would a merciful God allow many humans to suffer horrendous deaths?”),
my readings about the research into reincarnation that has been underway for more than 65 years at UVA Medical School’s Division of Perceptual Studies indicates that God exists and cares about our “spiritual entities” a great deal more than the bodies that transport us around and allow us to express our thoughts.
God knows we are careless with our own lives as well as with the lives of others, and that a lot of people will die in wars and accidents before they learn and act on God’s will that we help one-another, and have both the inclination and the financial resources to apply to this task. God’s solution is to give these souls multiple new opportunities. For 3,000+ years religious people mistakenly though God behaved like human rulers, and inflicted painful punishments on those who did wrong.
Regarding your 2nd unease about the possibility that the earliest versions of the Gospels were later “edited” by other writers, aren’t there enough differences and contradictions in the 4 Gospels to dispel this concern?
Bill Steigelmann
1. I read about 20 books about NDE’s when working on my book Heaven and Hell, and came to rather drastically different conclusions… 2. No, I don’t think so. An editor often is interested in doing very different things than correcting discrepancies.
So it is basically just curiosity why you would want to have these extant testimonies.
Which helps to answer something I’ve always wondered, and that is why didn’t God didn’t just make the extant materials of the teachings and resurrection of Jesus somehow accessible to everyone so as to convince the unbelievers. As you indicated though (at least for yourself), it probably wouldn’t change an unbeliever’s mind anyway. So the only benefit would probably be to merely satisfy the curious minds of unbelievers as yourself, which I imagine God couldn’t care less about
And it’s not that I think you and other non followers of Christ are being totally unreasonable, it’s just that when it comes to believing supernatural events it probably needs to come from the top (God) down (us), and not from the bottom up. In other words, not from the testimonies of men, but from the testimony of God (1John5:9). Which means to me that any belief in the testimony of a supernatural event, say in Paul’s 500, would have to first start with a foundational belief in a God of love
You’ll be pleased to know that I have learned much from your books, lectures, and blog posts and in some sense consider you my teacher despite never having met you. You will also be pleased to learn that despite my frequent acknowledgment of your vast wealth of expertise on these subjects related to early Christianity to all of my friends, I do not always agree with your arguments or conclusions. As an educator of many years myself, I can confirm that’s kind of the whole point- teachers teach students to think critically and to learn how to evaluate claims and construct arguments for themselves. My question is: have you ever had a disagreement with a student or professor that left you feeling discouraged? And if so, would you mind briefly commenting on what it was and how you navigated that situation?
With students I often leave disappointed because it appears they haven’t been paying attention! And sometimes it’s because they sometimes can’t see the flaws in an argument even when they are explained….
If teachers are always greater than students, then all knowledge would gradually decay over centuries, we would barely be able to count to ten today, and multiplication would be impossible…
Good point! (Well, knowledge of the Bible is certainly slipping away… But still.)
I’m currently reading 1 Kings, Romans and 3 Maccabees in my RSV Bible.