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QUESTION:
You have criticized other scholars for writing on subjects outside their fields of expertise – Reza Aslan, for instance, for his book on the historical Jesus when he is a sociologist, not a historian of religion. Have you considered editing a work with experts in the various fields that speak to the eyewitness to tradition to textual pipeline? Would such a collaboration likely be any more informative to a general audience?
RESPONSE:
Ah, great question! I’m going to answer what I take to be the underlying issue: why am I not following my own advice, but am publishing a book (next month!) that involves expertise other than my own? (In answer to the specific question: no, I haven’t really thought about editing a volume of other experts on memory! I have so many projects of my own that I have to do that… I haven’t even considered it, I’m afraid. There’s simply not enough time in life!)
As to what I take to be the underlying issue: My criticism of Aslan was not that he lacked expertise in the field he was writing about per se. It was that as a result of his lack of expertise, he got a lot of things wrong. I spent several posts talking about some of the errors in detail (just search for Aslan on the blog, and you’ll find them). The vast majority of these are not just different interpretations of the data that knowledgeable people might disagree about. They were just flat out mistakes.
I actually don’t object to non-experts writing about an area for which there actually is expertise and a large number of scholars who have it. What I object to is non-experts writing as if they were experts and not having those who are experts look at their work to help them out, to keep them from making mistakes. I don’t know why Aslan did not ask experts in, say, Roman history, ancient Judaism, and the New Testament to read over his manuscript tell him where he got his information wrong. But it would have made his extremely well written book much better if he had.
So, about my forthcoming book on Jesus Before the Gospels. Yes indeed, a lot of the book deals with memory studies and I do not have a PhD in psychology (working on personal memory) or sociology (collective memory) or anthropology (oral cultures). So isn’t that a problem?
It certainly *could* be! So let me tell you how I proceeded. First, I…
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Dr. Ehrman,
This is one of the reasons that I love reading your work on this blog and your published works, as well. It seems so rarely these days that someone is so open and honest about not only what they know, but also what they don’t know and/or what they are not sure about. As a scientist by training, I appreciate the “margin of error” that you relate to your work and your field in general, which itself does not deal with certainties as much as it deals with probabilities. I very much appreciate being able to grapple with these important issues with the knowledge that some things are virtually certain, others probably certain, others could possibly have happened, and for others, there is really no way to know.
So many in our world are quick to offer personal opinions (even if well-informed) as if they are fact, instead of acknowledging the uncertainty involved in any claim.
Thank you for being a model of honesty and transparency and for letting each of us, your readers on the blog and the readers of your published works, make up our own minds by giving us the best information possible and then leaving the critical determination up to us. In this way, I feel actively engaged in the discovery/learning process, rather than sitting and listening to a lecture from someone spouting a personal dogma.
Good stuff!
Dr. Ehrman, I read Daniel Schacter’s book The Seven Sins of Memory many years ago. I highly recommend it for anyone who wants to learn how our works — and often fails to work. If you went to Schacter for advice then I’m confident that you did your homework. Looking forward to the book.
*how our memory works
Which is not to say, of course, that all stories in the New Testament represent false memories and stories, otherwise your writings that defend the existence of a historical Jesus in any form would make no sense.
They didn’t get everything wrong. And to know that false memories can occur is not proof that they did in a given instance. So I’ll read the book with great interest, and sure as the sun will rise and taxes will fall due…..;)
I cannot wait for the book!
Your warm graciousness in explaining your answer to the question speaks well of you, Dr. Ehrman.
I can’t leave off feeling intrigued with the pricing of your new book – $18.77 plus postage when How Repentance Became Biblical (by an assistant professor) sells USED at Amazon for $59.16 plus postage. The Butterfly Effect that takes a mere ten minutes to read (have given to a number of friends) is $12.09 plus postage. Sorry for harping on this but it’s a mystery how you would price it so when sweat, toil and years have gone into writing it.
It all has to do with the market. Publishers price their books (high or low) to maximize their profits, and the prices *seem* to those of us outside the loop to be strangely varied as a result….
I learned first hand about “false memory” while still an undergraduate. One day I performed a very dramatic stunt on the boys next door. Later I told my roommate all about it in vivid detail. A couple weeks after that I overheard my roommate retelling the story in the first person as a stunt that he himself had done. When I spoke up and corrected him he looked at me in genuine puzzlement and it took him a few moments to sort out his false memory from the actual facts. These days the unreliability of eyewitness testimony is widely recognised.
When I want to read a book about a particular topic related to the bible, it’s sometimes difficult to find trustworthy authors. So many people write about the bible and proclaim to be experts when they’re not, or they do have expertise but write in such a way that I need a dictionary to figure out what they’re talking about. It’s even more problematic when an author doesn’t take the time to research the countering viewpoint and take it seriously into consideration. When I buy a book, I want to have confidence in the author to provide a thorough presentation of information without prejudice and bias. I think that would be difficult with even the best of intentions!
I am very pleased that you consulted scholars with differing views, so we can make an informed opinion.
Bart, I already have your book that I purchased recently on e-bay. My copy is labeled Uncorrected PROOF Not for Sale. … Hope your proofers catch “They were” not “There were” on page 63 and “no move” instead of “to move” on page 55. … That’s all I found so far. Great book, by the way!
Interesting that one scholar thinks you can trust collective memory a lot of the time, the other thinks not at all. Do these two look at the same studies and arrive at opposite results? The data must be pretty open to interpretation then.
They agree on what the scholarship says about the nature of social memory, but disagree on the implications for historicity.
Wow! What a methodical undertaking!
I do think that people from outside a given field can sometimes offer a fresh perspective that is quite helpful. An example is the recent finding that peptic ulcer disease can be caused by bacteria. This idea would have been considered to be far outside the mainstream a couple of decades ago when peptic ulcer disease was thought to be a psychosomatic disease and, hence, a subject for investigation by psychiatrists not infectious disease experts.
I agree that the biggest criticism of your upcoming book will be from those who object to the idea that the Gospels contain many “false memories” of Jesus. or exaggerated, embellished stories about Jesus as well as some historical “gist.”.
Good luck with your upcoming debate about the new book in New Orleans, You should at least be able to find some good food down there.
Bart, I’m writing a review of the book “Bart Ehrman and the Quest of the Historical Jesus of Nazareth,” with chapters written by multiple authors who are Jesus mythicists, including Robert Price, Frank Zindler and Richard Carrier. This book critiques your book “Did Jesus Exist?”
Some of the claims in the book are that you are unqualified to write about Christian origins, anthropology, Gnosticism and ancient religions and mythologies such as those about Osiris, Mithras, Dionysus and Heracles. It claims you have an amateur understanding of classics and that you mainly appeal to authorities instead of citing evidence from ancient texts. In fact there is an entire chapter in the book titled “Is Bart Ehrman Qualified to Write About Christian Origins?”
Could you explain how you researched and consulted experts in the writing of this book and the review process you used? Did anyone with expertise in Greco-Roman mythology and culture review your book? I’m sure this issue will come up in your debate with Robert Price or other mythicists.
I can see how someone might disagree with my views. But why would someone say I don’t have “qualifications” for writing about Christian origins??!? How many qualifications would I need? I have a PhD in New Testament; I had PhD exams in early Christian history; I’ve spent 30 years teaching Christian origins in major research universities; have been directly PhD students in Christian origins for 26 years in one of the top Religious Studies departments in the nation; I’ve written or edited 31 books on Christian origins with presses such as Oxford; Harvard; Scholars; Harper. And… and, really? I don’t have qualifications? Well, OK, go figure. (Is the critique that Robert Price or Frank Zindler; or … pick your mythicist … *better* qualified???)
This criticism by the mythicists is quite rich coming from someone like Richard Carrier, who — it is really obvious to me — does not understand ancient semitic cultures, religions or languages. I would give my left leg if Carrier can read Hebrew or Aramaic or any other semitic language. Carrier isn’t qualified to give an opinion on the origins of christianity, let alone express who is or is not qualified.
Dr. Ehrman, this is what I mean when I say you need to go out there and quash this mythicist nonsense for good. And I’m saying this as a staunch atheist myself, who understands how self-serving it is to pretend Jesus the man never existed. I actually get accused of being a crypto-christian by other atheists simply because I actually think Jesus the man actually existed! This nonsense has totally gotten out of hand! These mythicists are a canker sore on mouth of serious scholarship!
Yeah, but there’s no way to convince one of them!!!
I’m amazed that grown men, well into adulthood and who have extensive education, can stoop to such childish antics. They know using the term “unqualified” is offensive. Are they desperate for attention or trying to start an argument? Carrier can be insightful at times, but when it comes to assessing your work, he loses touch with reality. I find his lack of self-control comical because it’s just so outrageous.
Outstanding!
Just a question out of curiosity: Obviously part of your job includes keeping up to date with the directions scholarship on Christian Origins are going – keeping up to date with the hot issues and how scholars responding, etc. In doing so, how much time do you invest in keeping up to date with evangelical scholarship? I’m thinking of people like Craig Blomberg, N.T. Wright, Michael Bird, etc.? I know that you probably read these guys in preparation for a new book or debate, but in the general scheme of things, do you find it worth your time reading evangelical scholars? Do you ever feel you learn something from them?
I never intentionally read any scholarship because it is written by someone of one persuasion or another. That is, I don’t keep up on atheist NT scholarship or Presbyterian NT scholarship or evangelical NT scholarship or Jewish NT scholarship , etc. I simply read whatever is relevant to my current research interests. I have found over the years that a good deal of evangelical scholarship is less then helpful for me because there are so many foregone conclusions; these may be argued for in novel ways, but often the results are fairly predictable. That’s not as true, in my experience, with other kinds of scholarship (though it does happen elsewhere as well)
Speaking of websites being down, the IRS website was down for a couple of days very recently. Taxes were due, regardless.
I have been wondering about social memory since even today, looking back over the last 5 years in America, social memory played a large part in determining social movements such as black lives matter and hands up don’t shoot. Upon investigations by the DOJ it was determined that many of the eyewitness accounts were not accurate, but had helped shape large social movements nonetheless. That got me thinking about the original Jesus movement, and many of the church movements over the years. If it can happen today in our world full of smartphone cams, imagine the time when oral storytelling was all we had.