When I came to this site/forum in October, I did not come exactly as I went to Biologos in 2017 about the issue of the Bible versus evolution. In that case, I went to see if two seemingly irreconcilable points of view could be reconciled. After all, there was a public sense that Biologos existed for the very purpose of demonstrating that the two could be reconciled. Although I found people there who claimed to have achieved this reconciliation, but when pressed for details had nothing substantive to offer. Nevertheless, I did learn a good bit from the two months I spent with them. I came to this forum with a slightly different goal. I did not come expecting to see anything reconciled for me or by me. Rather I came expecting practically everyone here to disagree with the position I take on NT authorship. I expected this would lead to one of two possible outcomes.
Before I describe those alternative outcomes, let me make clear what I did not expect. I did not expect to change anyone’s mind. It’s not that I don’t want to persuade people of things; I do and I have a website for that purpose. But this forum is not a place for me to try to persuade people. Exchange views, yes; learn from each other, yes. But not debate. At times we’ve come close to debating, but we all managed to back off before things became too antagonistic or argumentative. Now I’ll explain the two possible outcomes I came here seeking.
One possible outcome of my presenting my views here would be that you folks would identify one or more major holes in my argument that would cause me to re-think it or possibly even abandon it. The other possible outcome was that you would identify one or more minor holes in my argument that would cause me to improve it. I would have considered either of those outcomes to be a success. As it’s turned out, it’s the latter outcome that has been achieved. That is, you’ve made me see ways I can improve the way I explain things.
To get the most from my experience I began a couple of days ago re-reading all your posts from the very beginning of this thread. I’m almost a third of the way through. I’ll post any observations I think are worth sharing. So far, I have one to share and it’s highly relevant to my desire to improve the way I explain my view and interact with others.
The first thing I learned is something I’m still struggling to process. I thought everyone – on both sides of the issue – agreed that antiquity took a position on NT authorship with which modernity largely disagreed. That is, ancient scholars declared a specific author for each NT book; that is, they named eight men who authored the 27 texts, with modern scholars only having consensus on one author and that of 7 texts (the undisputed Paulines). In fact, this was the only major point of Bart’s book “Forged” with which I fully agreed. If we can’t agree that ancient churches and the scholars who documented their opinions rendered a verdict on NT authorship, then the question with which I launched the thread is moot.
One improvement I found after coming here was to reduce the ancient testimony to three key citations which would epitomize the whole: Eusebius in EH 3.25, Athanasius in FL 39.5, and Augustine CF 33.6.
Let me digress momentarily to discuss a guiding principle I follow in all my work. It’s the famous quote attributed to Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
“I would not give a fig for the simplicity on this side of complexity; but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.”
ChatGPT says this statement “highlights the value of profound simplicity, which emerges after one has fully understood and navigated the complexity of an issue. It contrasts with superficial simplicity, which arises from ignorance or avoidance of complexity.” But since I began using those three epitomizing quotations, I’ve found something even simpler to make the point: the NT itself.
The New Testament, by its very creation as a collection in the 4th-5th centuries and its continued existence down to our time, is a declaration of authorship – and this can be seen most succinctly in its table of contents. Paul’s is the only name of the eight authors that does not explicitly appear in the TOC, but that lacuna is easily filled by flipping to any of his 14 letters (Jerome’s politically-astute shift of Hebrews from 10th to 14th in the traditional Pauline order when translating the Vulgate did not inhibit the King James translators who title it “The Epistle of Paul, the Apostle, to the Hebrews” in the family Bible my wife and I were given as a wedding present.)
That the NT itself bears witness to the verdict of ancient Christians on the authorship of their most treasured texts just makes the discussion more streamlined. It does not do away with the value of the three key texts I cited or of the totality of ancient witnesses to apostolic texts throughout the first 500 years of Christianity. For example, I can now start with the NT. If people don’t believe it makes a claim about authorship, I can bring in the three key witnesses (Eusebius, Athanasius, and Augustine). And, if that’s not enough, I can start reeling off Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen, and all the rest.
Valuing efficiency of discussion as I do, failing to convince someone that the ancients reached a verdict on NT authorship of all the books and published it means I should not seek to engage them on the question of the thread any further. If there’s no disagreement on NT authorship between ancient and modern scholars, then – to me at least – it’s pointless to pick one as better qualified for determining the authors.
Something I knew before, but have had reinforced during my time here, is that focus on the problem* books bogs down the discussion. A related point that was reinforced is that people generally don’t believe me when I say I’m only interested in discussing this issue of NT authorship from the standpoint of history – not theology. Because of these two points, you saw me offer to reduce the scope of the discussion from the 27 texts to the 20 books Eusebius identified as undisputed. That allows a clear visual: “the 20 undisputed texts per Eusebius of Caesarea (epitomizing ancient scholars) versus the 7 undisputed texts per Bart of Ehrman (epitomizing modern scholars).”
*By “problem books” I mean the seven Eusebius described as disputed: Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, 2 John, 3 John, Jude, and Revelation. Stephen rightly refers to two of them – James and Hebrews – in his post 340 above. I believe the only way to make any meaningful progress from a historical point of view is to discuss the less problematic books first. If no agreement can be found there, then there’s no sense pulling our hair out on the others.
In other words, I’m not saying I’ve learned how to avoid all conversational snags, but I do now have a few more hacks to help reach conclusions, preliminary and final, sooner rather than later.
For anyone willing to move beyond this point, I hope to have for you tomorrow a report on what I’ve learned from my time here about objectively comparing the respective methodologies of ancient and modern scholars.
(I apologize that I do not have time this morning to proofread this post.)
The writings of Hegesippus are lost. That is wear/where the link in the chain is broken. If non authentic traditions of the first century church began to crawl into the later history; that is where to look.
The priest (preacher man) reads from the books stories about the dead, and judges the living and dead according to the stories in the books.
The Same, to Philip, Prefect of Illyria.
All innovation having been abolished, We command that ancient custom and the former ecclesiastical canons which have been in force up to this time shall be observed through all the provinces of Illyria; and if any doubt should arise with reference to them, it must be removed by the knowledge of the Holy Law possessed by that most reverend man, the Patriarch of the Church of the City of Constantinople (which enjoys the prerogatives of Ancient Rome), and the judgment of the ecclesiastical assembly of that City.
Given on the day before the Ides of July, during the Consulate of Eustachius and Agricola, 421.
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It’s quite possible to maintain a lie if people need the Church for their own safety and well being, and vice versa.
Proverbs 23:13-14
Proverbs 22:6
Proverbs 22:9
The Church needs people who can read and write. It wasn’t a common skill like it is nowadays. The scribes need sustenance and shelter too. It costs a lot of money to manufacture a book.
I’ll add my own few closing thoughts here.
First, in my own recently mentioned crisis of faith, the critical turn was when I questioned why I trusted the early Christians.
I used to argue, apologetically, that Christianity made too many specific falsifiable claims for it to have spread if those claims were not accurate. For example, no one would believe Luke-Acts if Paul hadn’t actually healed Publius’s father and many others besides. Surely someone would have just asked the Maltese, who just as surely would have remembered such a remarkable, relatively recent visitor to their relatively small island. And if the Maltese had no recollection of such a remarkable event, surely no one would have been so gullible as to place any credence in Acts (neither would they have accepted Luke).
I was making assumptions about the early Christians and their intelligence and propensity to accept claims.
As I looked around, not just at history, but at my contemporaries, I found many examples of large groups of people believing–even dying for–demonstrably false claims. And that is today, in an age of science and immediate communication.
People are lazy fact-checkers. We take shortcuts in weighing competing claims. Sociology is one of many powerful motives for belief that have very little to do with truth: We are strongly inclined to accept claims that build up our tribe’s narrative. We sort people into friend and foe, good guys and bad guys, and we are ready to accept what our friends say with little question, while we are suspicious or dismissive of everything the black-hats claim.
I also realized that by accepting the implicit testimony of the early Christians who accepted these claims, I was dismissing out of hand the implicit testimony of the many pagans and Jews who did not convert–and indeed vilifying them (I mean, how inveterately evil must the Jews of Jerusalem have been not to convert after they witnessed the dead rising at the crucifixion? There is a reason that antisemitism tended to creep into Christianity as time passed: It is kind of embarrassing for the Jews to reject their own Messiah, especially if he fulfilled the prophesies as clearly as Christians insist he did.)
And the fact that someone–a Jerome or an Augustine–is particularly smart doesn’t alter their susceptibility to bias. There is significant body of research showing that the smarter you are the more likely you are to demonstrate biased thinking. There are two sides of this: The first is that it is–in a certain respect–quite rational to believe what your group believes. (Consider a person living in a country where apostasy means death, while piety and vigorously defending the group’s beliefs gains you influence and trust; convincing yourself of what everyone else believes is a good strategy for your own thriving.) The second is that intelligence, as often as not, just gives us better sophistical tools to defend our beliefs, not necessarily to get to the truth. Smart people–master debaters–can defend anything. And they can defend it not only to others, they can genuinely convince themselves that it is true. This is motivated thinking. We want something to be true and so we, quite reasonably, go out looking for reasons to that show it is true. It practically by definition what apologists do.
I’ve seen this in my own life in areas unrelated to religion. For decades, I was absolutely convinced (and could argue quite convincingly with plenty of evidence) that the American Civil War was not really about slavery. Of course, the situation was complicated, and there were other issues, but my position was simply wrong. Several of the deep southern states themselves said so in official texts–but, despite my own beliefs about my motives, I wasn’t dispassionately looking for truth, I was looking to shore up my tribe’s narrative.
This is the other important consideration: Once we commit to a narrative, we can and will force any evidence into that narrative. Quine gave his web of belief analogy to show that it is in principle possible to reconcile any new evidence to any existing beliefs. You just have to be willing to make the necessary adjustments in our overall belief system. The issue is just which beliefs you are most deeply committed to and how much your are willing to modify other beliefs in order to save those core beliefs. If you are convinced that Christ is God and established a Church by commissioning the apostles, it is easy enough to reconcile all the evidence that would call that narrative into question.
This is why I’m convinced framing a question like the titular question of this thread narrowly is unlikely to facilitate meaningful progress. Each side thinks the other side is hopelessly biased, and that disagreement probably can’t be overcome unless we expand the discussion to assess openly our more basic commitments and those most deeply held convictions that influence how we approach these problems. For example, my view of this question has definitely been influence by my conviction that the gospel of Matthew certainly wasn’t written by an eyewitness.
This question of authorship and books in the Bible was outlawed in the year 421AD. Yet here everywhere there is now 18 pages of debate about it.
You have to go find the Patriarch in Constantinople to make a fuss about anything. He’s dead. There’s no law found that says the authority was passed on to anyone else after he died.
Porphyry, Stephen, and Robert,
Given that Porphyry has given his “closing thoughts,” and that Stephen and Robert have recently commented, I think this makes a good time for me to go ahead and leave. For one thing, it will allow me to have given all of you the last word. The one exception I’ll make to that is to say that I find a lot of agreement with what Porphyry wrote about “tribes” and the power they have to impair our reasoning processes.
Thank you all for your participation in this thread. If you write anything else to me here, I won’t be able to see it, but if you want to communicate with me now or down the road, you can always find me on my website:
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I had assumed that my access to this forum would be cut off as soon as I canceled my subscription. However, it appears that my access might continue until the renewal date. If so, I will be responding to your latest posts as I have time.
I will still give all of you the last word before my departure, only this time I’ll give you notice ahead of time. (Part of the satisfaction of having the last word is knowing ahead of time that you’ll have it, and also knowing that the person to whom you’re writing will read it. I’ll give you both.)
The latest date I could be on here is December 20, but if you find me unresponsive before then it just means the cancellation took effect before the expiration date after all.
(Poor Robert – projecting right up to the end. Don’t forget, I’ve told all of you where you can find me even after I’ve left here.)
I had assumed that my access to this forum would be cut off as soon as I canceled my subscription. However, it appears that my access might continue until the renewal date. If so, I will be responding to your latest posts as I have time.
Yes you won’t be cancelled. You’ll simply not be renewed. Until then…
Mike I read your book. Interesting! Revealing! It clarifies the opinions you’ve expressed in this thread a great deal. I’m tempted to review it on this here site since it raises a lot of the issues that concern those of us who participate. (I’ve book reviewed a bit already here.) But I wouldn’t want to be superficial and I have another long term project in mind, and especially if you’re not going to be availble for a response, then I’m not sure I want to proceed. Being a staunch advocate of seperation of church and state and defender of secularism (it is the foundation of our liberty), I would love to have that argument. But thanks indeed for the link.
Closing thoughts?
Like a moth I circle the candle. If you begin with the presupposition that the texts of the Bible are special in some way that distinguishes them from other ancient literature, whether you express it in theological terms like “divine inspiration” or even with some sort of cultural chauvinism, then you are looking at the texts through a distorted lens of intepretation. Interpretation is inevitable but you will project rather than discern.
Now, please understand, I am not saying that these texts cannot be “divine inspired”. But that is a claim that must be demonstrated, not assumed. A conclusion to be reached. This gives the lie to the accusation made by many Christian apologists that modern critical scholarship begins with an anti-Christian bias. (An odd claim since the vast majority of modern critical scholars are themselves believers! Oh, I forgot. They’re liberals.)
Apologists present us with a implicit binary. One either actively supports the faith or actively opposes it. No middle ground. But just as political secularism provides us with a neutral field from which all ideological points of view may safely coexist, modern historical/critical theory provides us with a neutral field from which to consider all claims.
There is significant body of research showing that the smarter you are the more likely you are to demonstrate biased thinking.
This is because really smart people are more creative and can think up more creative rationalizations. This makes it imperative that we, not accidently, but consciouslly seek out alternative opinions. Study the outlook that flabbergasts us most. Become active listeners. Even if we don’t change our minds we’ll at least know what these folks really think. Easier said than done, of course, but rather worth doing.
In my life I have gone from the faith I was raised in to my present state of unbelief. I learned a lot from that journey. A journey I hope is never ending. If you don’t know anything else about me you at least know I can change my mind.
Stephen, regarding your post #357:
I would prefer to interact about my book on my own website because that would make the discussion public for everyone to see for free. However, out of respect for your effort, if you proceed to review my book in this forum, I will renew my subscription per your request of me “to be available for a response.”
More books to read now? How do I know who the original author was? Was any plagiarism snuck in?
Scholars are like guitar players playing cover songs. Hey check this out, it’s Jimi Hendrix then Jimmy Page, no it’s Clapton, no way it’s Eddie Van Halen but it’s all on slide open tunings like Robert Johnson.
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert
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