Robert, this is my response to your post 258:
“You claim that lack of agreement about canonicity in Alexandria during the time of Athanasius is not relevant to authorship, but you yourself have also said that it’s authorship that determined canonicity.”
You say that as if you’ve caught me in some sort of contradiction. It is the TIMING of canonicity that is not relevant to authorship in the first clause – not canonicity per se – and timing was the focus on the quotes you sent me from and about Bart’s article in post 236. That’s why I said the article was peripheral to the point of the thread.
“No, that ground had already been covered by modern critical scholarship for over a hundred years, as you’ve already admitted was the viewpoint advanced in the book.”
But this book was not marketed to critical scholars; it was marketed to lay readers, for whom it was a new subject – at least in the bold colors with which Bart painted it.
“By the way, the titles of books are determined by the publisher.”
I know a little bit about the publishing world. The publisher has the final say, but it doesn’t mean the author has no say. But even if Bart had zero percent participation in that title, consider his chapter titles – unless you want to insist that the publisher is responsible for all of those, too.
Introduction: Facing the Truth
1. A World of Deceptions and Forgeries
2. Forgeries in the Name of Peter
3. Forgeries in the Name of Paul
4. Alternatives to Lies and Deceptions
5. Forgeries in Conflicts with Jews and Pagans
6. Forgeries in Conflicts with False Teachers
7. False Attributions, Fabrications, and Falsifications: Phenomena Related to Forgery
8. Forgeries, Lies, Deceptions, and the Writings of the New Testament
Anyone who has read this book knows that its title does not misrepresent it.
“You used your memory of a book Bart wrote as evidence to support your larger, false allegations against modern scholarship. Do I need to remind you of those?”
Bart epitomizes modern scholarship. He may be more commercial and brash than most, but in his views, he claims to be a representative sample and I have no reason to doubt him on that point. But as for all the outliers – that is, all the modern scholars who don’t think and act like Bart on this subject – I happily exonerate them. What I condemn is Enlightenment-inspired scholars who disrespect ancient scholars by omitting appropriate references to them when writing for popular audiences.
Not one jot or tittle
Matthew 5:18 and the WW2-state of Israel situation back to nowhere.
As far as I know, most of the Greek manuscript history stuff are hoaxes and myths created by the Protestants. The Johannine Comma thing goes all the way back to the Protestant Reformation as they claimed it was not scripture. However, I have several family heirloom Bibles here 100 years old from Protestant churches and nobody had even heard about the issue. That there’s actually Greek texts surviving longer than Latin texts? Um, no. The textual dating system and is a myth itself based on paleography. I no longer accept paleography because of the Hobby Lobby, Museum of the Bible, Dead Sea Scrolls spaghetti incident. Throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks and turn the Ancient Greek papyrus and codexs into the new relics.
As for Colin’s posts, I have not been able to figure out where he’s coming from, so I’ve just had to learn to ignore his posts to this thread. As for what you guys do or don’t do about him is up to you because I don’t know enough about him to contribute an informed opinion.
As for Colin’s posts, I have not been able to figure out where he’s coming from…
Colin inhaled.
What I condemn is Enlightenment-inspired scholars who disrespect ancient scholars by omitting appropriate references to them when writing for popular audiences.
You mean like how an evoutionary biologist won’t take time in a popular book about evolution to discuss the Genesis creation myths?
The NT doesn’t tell of the apostles deaths because they were all raptured before 70AD. The spaceship has already come almost 2000 years ago and they were taken to another galaxy and new earth. The former heaven and earth passing away was John the Baptist looking out the window of the spaceship as they left to travel to the new Heaven and new earth located in the new Galaxy. How the Revelation history book got back to planet earth here is a mystery.
Authorship is sometimes one of those unfalsifiable situations because everything in this example is based on “a priori”. It’s almost 2000 years beyond having “posteriori”
You could go through each gospel book and remove every single chapter where it’s impossible that the author was an eye witness of the events occurring in the chapter. The gospel book could not have been written by the same author according to that method.
It begins with the author had to be a disciple of John the Baptist and a relative of Jesus.
He didn’t seem to get the message.
I’m pretty confident he is a troll (albeit one either relatively well educated or at least well read), so not getting the message would be deliberate.
What’s weird is that trolls usually go away if they are ignored, but he is remarkably persistent.
A thought experiment and no hope of determining authorship.
Possibly the real authors wanted to keep themselves secret because being a part of that particular messiah group was considered treason by all; Judea, Roman Empire, and the Church. The safest way to write was to use the names of those who were already dead. Did it work? No. The suspicion of insurrection was not convinced otherwise, like the Green Corn Rebellion after WW1, and McCarthyism during the 1950s after WW2. What would be the reason then for creating a forgerie?
To replace a lost text as honestly as possible from memory,
or use the name as authority to push in new theology? The whole point of the Church in my opinion was to replace all 70 seats in the Sanhedrin and establish a new King and eventually become independent from the Roman Empire. If they just wanted to establish their own little town somewhere then why are they centered in Jerusalem?
Like when the Declaration of Independence was written and sent to Great Britain it only had two names on it, but it was written by many more.
Robert, I’ve already responded to your post 258, but I stumbled across a paragraph in it today that I don’t recall seeing before. I thought there were a couple of sentences in it to which I ought to respond.
“Someone like you, who wants to level false criticisms against modern critical scholarship, or other conservative apologists, want to make this controversial, but for the rest of us it is not controversial.”
This sentence sounds like the logical equivalent of “With those who agree with me, I have no disagreement; and people who disagree with us have no legitimate basis for doing so.” The sentence is also infected with pejorative language, to which you seem to resort frequently – an example being “scholars” used for those who agree with you and “conservative apologists” for those who don’t. Do people who disagree with you forfeit their reputation for scholarship?
“What is concerning to me (to Bart as well) is that so many Christian pastors who are themselves trained in modern critical biblical scholarship do not share their knowledge about such issues with their congregations.”
Perhaps it is because, at least for some of them, the modern critical scholarship to which they’ve been exposed has been found unpersuasive.
Stephen, this is my response to your post 267:
“You mean like how an evolutionary biologist won’t take time in a popular book about evolution to discuss the Genesis creation myths?”
Though I would indeed welcome it if scholars of evolutionary myths engaged more respectfully with the realities of creation when they publish for popular markets, there are a couple of ways in which I expect less of them than of Bart (and most of his NT peers, for that matter). First, most evolutionary biologists have never seriously examined creation or biblical arguments and so don’t know enough about that point of view to productively engage with it, but Bart has been thoroughly exposed to the arguments of ancient scholars about NT authorship (quoting Eusebius and Augustine as authorities when they are useful to his didactic purposes, and ignoring them when their writings would undermine his views). Second, the arguments for creation can be supported by evidence but it takes faith in the word of God to accept a six-day creation, whereas the claims of ancient scholars about NT authorship do not require any faith in God; that is, their arguments are entirely human and historical in nature, requiring no faith in divine involvement. This is why I have hewn throughout this thread to a historical perspective, leaving faith, theology, and such outside the scope.
Observation 6: Consider the New Testament’s Table of Contents. (There’s only one New Testament and it has only one table of contents.) What is it saying? It’s saying a lot. For one thing, it’s declaring the authors of all 27 books. In fact, that’s the main way NT books are identified – that is, by who authored each one.
In post 235 I asked Porphyry if he was, by his post 230, conceding that there was indeed a consensus about NT authorship in antiquity, and have not heard an answer from him on this point yet. If there was no consensus about authorship in antiquity, how is it that all NT’s today have the same table of contents with essentially the same book titles?
By my count, I am the only one on this thread who has taken the position that ancient scholars are better qualified than modern ones to determine NT authorship. What I remain fuzzy on is exactly what the rest of you believe about modern scholars and their view(s) on NT authorship. (Of course, I’m not considering Colin in any of this analysis.) Some of you seem to believe that modern scholars are better qualified than ancient scholars to determine NT authorship, but others of you seem to take the position that the question is improperly framed since modern scholars don’t even attempt to determine NT authorship. But I find this latter position incoherent, for if someone says there are seven undisputed Paulines and the rest of the authors are unknown (as Bart does in “Forged”), such a person is surely taking a position on NT authorship.
Any help you folks can give me on this point?
People on this thread who think ancient scholars are better able to determine NT authorship: 1
People on this thread who think modern scholars are better able to determine NT authorship: ?
I’m not trying to get a count of people per se, I just want to know where my opposition stands because it’s not clear to me 1) if you’re all standing in the same place, and 2) what the place exactly is.
The ancient scholar were on occasion tricked themselves. Erasmus was tricked into adding the Johannine Comma with a forged text.
The honorable Professor Ehrman himself even investigated the codex that was used to trick Erasmus. Took another 400 years to get the English version Bibles to stop printing it, but it’s still in the footnotes. I have Bibles that were printed 100 years ago that still have it in there, even though the issue began during the Protestant reformation some 300 years before those bibles were printed.
Interpolations like this example are a possible argument. It is probable given the evidence that exists. However since the original 1st century texts handwritten by the authors themselves do not exist, nothing is absolutely probable. That’s the way she goes.
That’s the problem faced with determining authorship. There’s not enough evidence because it doesn’t exist anymore.
If the first century evidence does exist then it means the paleography method of dating texts has tricked them. Is that possible? Yes,
In post 235 I asked Porphyry if he was, by his post 230, conceding that there was indeed a consensus about NT authorship in antiquity, and have not heard an answer from him on this point yet. If there was no consensus about authorship in antiquity, how is it that all NT’s today have the same table of contents with essentially the same book titles?
I concede that, among the orthodox, by the fourth century, there is a consensus concerning the authorship of most of the books of the NT.
BDEhrman
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