Next week I’m off to give a talk at an evangelical Christian conference that is dealing with contradictions in the Gospels; the other speakers will be explaining either why they don’t actually exist or why they are completely insignificant or how they can be comfortably explained given ancient writing practices or … or some other point that will assure their committed Christian audience that there’s nothing really to worry about. It will be in Chicago and is called the Defenders Conference.
I quite admire the organizers of the conference because they genuinely want to hear the other side from me. As y’all know, I think there are serious contradictions in the Gospel that cannot be reconciled or explained away, and these demonstrate that the Gospels are not historically reliable. I’m not saying (I’m NOT saying) that there is *nothing* reliable in the Gospels. Of course there are lots and lots of reliable materials in the Gospels (the key is figuring out which ones they are). But anyone who thinks they give a fully reliable account of what Jesus really said and did — not just in small details but also in very big matters — I think is completely wrong.
I’m known to have that view, of course, and am regularly attacked as the Bad Guy (or rather, the Scion of Satan) by Christian “apologists” (= defenders of the faith), since I was once one of them and then went over to the dark side. Or as I tell them, I finally “saw the light”! (If they’re friends, they laugh about it. I have one friend, a decidedly *not* evangelical Methodist minister, who says I went from being “born again” to being “dead again.”) I don’t expect to be attacked personally at the conference. I told the organizers that I’d be happy to present my views thoughtfully but I didn’t want to do so if the point was to rip me apart in my absence.
That happens sometimes. Just recently I’ve had a number of blog members ask me about comments made about me by theologian William Lane Craig, where he says things that in fact just aren’t true. Just now I was browsing through the blog looking for old posts on something else (my next thread: how we can establish what the authors of the New Testament *originally* wrote, and how close I think we can get to the “originals”) when I inadvertently ran across this post from many years ago, which I’d forgotten about. It’s worth posting again, ’cause I feel the same way still and it keeps happening. Why don’t people who want to attack false views simply tell the truth?
Here’s the post. As you’ll see, I was in a bit of a mood….
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I have to admit, I sometimes get a bit tired of being the whipping boy for fundamentalist and conservative evangelical Christian apologists. If they would deal with my views head on and actually get the facts of my life right, it would be one thing. But when they publicly accuse me of holding, or having held, positions that I never did – when they are flat our wrong in what they say about me — it gets under my skin.
The first time I noticed this in a big way was when …
The post gets a bit hot after this. Those who belong to the blog can see it. Those who do not, not. Why not join? You get five posts a week, almost all of them directly on the history and literature of early Christianity. Tons of information, for a very small fee – and the entire amount goes to charity.
WLC has a history of taking famous atheists and agnostics out of context. He made an egregious error towards Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss as well. He did 3 Reasonable Faith podcast episodes using a error filled, bootleg copy of the audio only, from the up coming documentary by Krauss and Dawkins, “The Unbelievers” (2013). He had to apologize on the back page of his website, to “make up” for the mistakes.
Doesn’t Licona admit to some historical innacurracies while holding to the idea that the Gospels are still in some way inspired?
Well, he thinks that some passages (the zombies in Matthew 25) are not literal descriptions of what happened.
If the Bible can be wrong about one thing, who’s to say it can’t be wrong about another thing? He says faith in God is at the centre. Faith in what God? Where does he get this knowledge and how can he determine its accuracy? If he says “the inner witness of the Spirit ” how does he know he’s not delusional? If he says the Bible how does he know it’s correct about a topic that cannot be tested?
Craig forgets to mention the crucial item of faith that’s at the center of the “web of theological beliefs”. Namely, the belief that humans have an invisible, immaterial, and immortal soul. Once an individual realizes that the chance that such a soul exists is billions to one against, then the entire edifice of the Christian faith is demolished. No supernatural order. No eternal afterlife. No need for salvation theory. No rewards and punishments after death. No cheating death by fantasies of heaven, hell, devils. Death is the end of human existence. Beyond death is non-existence.
I think materialistic Christianity is possible, since the afterlife is about resurrection of the body instead of a disembodied soul.
Truth tellers are never going to be very popular, I fear. Ideally, we would all embrace a cogent argument, an evidence based critique of what we believe to be true, so that we can learn where we went wrong and understand the evidence in favor of an alternative. Ideally, we would all be objective and would have no emotional attachment to our beliefs or opinions. We would be like analytical engines, evaluating data without personal bias. But instead we’re human, and we just don’t function like that, as a rule. I really admire people who aren’t afraid to go where the evidence leads them. They seem to be few and far between. But such people are NEEDED!! Unfortunately, they are also going to upset a lot of apple carts, and take a lot of flack.
You said it! Telling the truth is such a downer! People could lose their Lear jets from these people obsessed with facts!
“As y’all know”: second paragraph and second line!!!
Dr. Ehrman, with that – and you most certainly said it – we southerners can claim you now for our very own. 🙂
Youse surely can!
🙂
Oh Bart, the only point to be made in the matter of the resurrection is this; if one is dead there is no way the body can resurrect. It defies the rules of physics. The body decomposes and after three days well seriously, one is dead and not coming back. Those are biological, physical, and realistic facts that apply to us all as everyone knows. Even children know this. As a child I had to think of the resurrection as a spiritual or metaphorical one although I didn’t know to put it in those terms. The folks who insist that Jesus had a physical resurrection are just, IMO, either delusional, crazy, in denial, cultists, believe in magic, stupid, hard core Catholics and Christians whose brains are atrophied, or happy to be mired in conspiracy and non-sense, and just plain flat earthers. It is almost not worth the bother to debate them because it is a waste of time and energy. I give you credit for even bothering.
Do you know what the definition of a miracle is? Christians believe exactly what you are saying – that resurrection is a suspension of the natural laws (physics, biology, etc.) by God in a supernatural way.
When you can’t argue the facts because they go against you…many resort to discrediting the person. I have observed WLC is getting worse in this regard and I suspect it is an indication of the increasing cognitive dissonance that he needs to suppress. His schtick is well past its due date and is starting to smell to such a degree that even his ardent fans sense a loss of gravitas. That and his age is catching up with him and he’s just getting nastier. Chin up Dr. Ehrman, they all know you are making a substantial difference with your efforts and that is why they resort to lying about you.
In the last paragraph you use two key phrases: “the correct approach to Christian truth” and “I would be a believer still.” When I see those. Terms thrown around I ask myself what the speaker means by “correct” approach, “Christian truth,” and simply what is meant by being a “believer?” What do these words mean? Even my own son, who is an evangelical minister, will not discuss religion with me since we disagree on so many of the issues you mentioned in today’s blog. So, what exactly is is we are to believe, what is Christian truth” and what exactly is a “believer” supposed to believe in order to reach “salvation” ( another word with many meanings). I have been told that there are nearly 40,000 different forms of Christianity in the world…are they all wrong except for the one true faith, whatever that is.
If so, maybe you could write an article sometime giving us the fundamental beliefs we need to believe to be loved by God…oops, maybe we already have that list in “fundamentalism” 🙂 … thank you for your good articles.
Hey Bart, here is what I wanted to ask you. In all 3 Gospels we see this, but let us use Mark, for example. In Mark 1:3 John is said to have fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah by being a forerunner to Jesus Christ. In this verse, Mark quotes Isaiah to refer to Jesus in this way: “Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.” In this verse, John is the one proclaiming, that they are to prepare the way for Jesus. The term “Lord” here refers to Jesus, and the term “him” refers to Jesus too. This is significant because this passage is a quotation of Isiah 40:3, which states: “prepare the way for the Lord (Yahweh) make straight in the desert a highway for our God.”
Do you believe that Matthew, Mark and Luke are applying the pronouns of Yahweh to Jesus? And is this significant?
Thanks
No, definitely not. Jesus is the Lord, but he is not God the Father. (Saying that he is was one of the earliest officially-declared heresies of early Christianity, sometimes called modalism or patripassianism). Remember that in these Gospels Jesus also quotes the Psalm, “The LORD said to my Lord” in order to show that the messiah is actually the Lord. But obviously the LORD is not talking to himself when he speaks to “my Lord.” So there are two beings: Yahweh (The LORD) and another divine being, the Lord. Both are lords, but they are different people.
So you do not think that Yahweh was the name of the deity, while Father was the person? Because, in Greek Septuagint, until the 3rd century AD, it was common, from what I understand from Wikipedia (hey, we can’t all be that gifted), Tetragramaton was regularly used in the place of “Lord”. So if Luke is literally saying that Jesus is Lord (translated from YHWH), what would he have to say that would convince you that he is YHWH?
I think in biblical times they hadn’t worked out the categories and definitions at all (“person” “nature” “essence” etc.). Most of these authors believed in the God of Israel and also thoguht that Jesus too was God. For some of them that’s because God made Jesus God. For others he had been a kind of divine angel before he came into the world. For others he was in some sense fully divine before he came into the world. Each author had his own view, many of them at odds. It was only much, much later that anyone came up with the doctrine of the Trinity. Luke himself did not read Hebrew, so he did not know the name Yahweh. When the Hebrew uses the name Yahweh, the Septuagint sometimes translates that as “God” and sometimes as “Lord” and — oterht things? I don’t know, I haven’t checked fully. “Lord” is also in the Septuagint used of other beings — humans, angels, etc., when translating another Hebrew work, Adonai. So Luke wouldn’t know that there is a special word Yahweh different from the word Adonai, both being translated the same way in his Bible. he just knows the word Lord (Greek kurios). For him, Jesus is kurios. And God is kurios. And Jesus is God. And God is God But Jesus is not the same God as the God that he prays to. Luke hasn’t worked out yet how to work all that out, in a systematic way. I cover all this at length in my book How Jesus Became God. have you read it yet? It would be right up your alley.
But Nicene christians werent committing the heresy of modalism when they said both the father and Jesus were God.
Mark tells us the messiah is lord right after telling us god is lord and there are no lords but him.
That’s right. They were both God. But they weren’t the same person. That’s one of the major points of Nicea.
But why not say mark thought they were both lord but not the same person?
Sorry — when I hear anyone say “person” with respect to the godhead, I tend to think they are using it in the technical sense that it came to have in the trinitarian debates of the fourth century. If you mean, “he is not identical” then I agree.
But “person” and “being” werent given a technical sense in the fourth century – they just needed some words to describe how the father and jesus could both be god but not be identical to each other.
This paradoxical idea had to have originated somewhere – isnt marks 12:29-37 an excellent candidate for this origination?
I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean. Of course they were given technical meanings in the theological debates of the fourth century. Have you read the literature from the period?
No not all of it 🙂 – hypostasis and ousia weren’t though precisely defined in the fourth century (they still aren’t), what was needed was only an agreement on what two words to use.
The theological doctrine of the same but different is more ancient than the 4th century. Why not say it goes back to Mark where he tells us God and the messiah are both lord despite the fact he’s just told us there is only one lord?
Think you’re not right about that. The precise terms precisely were debated. That means different people did have clear ideas. Just because they didn’t convince others of their particular definitions doesn’t mean they didn’t come up with them. And no one was doing that in the first century, not even close. And of course it does go back, not to Mark, but to Paul. But so do hundreds of other views that were contrary to the ones that emerged.
I think ousia was just defined to mean that way in which the father and son are the same and hypostasis that way in which they are different. But that using them in those senses both before and after the 4thC could get you accused of heresy. The idea of the same but different was the only thing which was constant and goes back to the NT.
There is actually a good deal of philosophical work being done based on ancient Greek philosohical categories. And no, the categories are definitely not those used by or even known to the authors of the NT. If you’re seriously interested in the topic, I’d suggest you read some books on Nicene christology/theology, e.g., the work of Lewis Ayres.
ok thanks
“But Nicene christians werent committing the heresy of modalism when they said both the father and Jesus were God.”
how does this work out? if you are saying x and y are z, then you are saying z = 1
x and y = 1
this is modalism, unless you say x and y is in 1, then 2 in 1 IS not 1
if you say BOTH have the same powers, then you have 2 gods who are NOT identical to each other
if you say x and y is IDENTICAL to z, then you COLLAPSED the two..
Its paradoxical – as long as you say x not= y you cant be accused of modalism. As long as x and y = z its not arianism. It might be internally inconsistent but not modalism.
I grew up in a Lutheran church and I don’t recall any discussions or debates about inerrancy. I think if someone had pointed out discrepancies or contradictions they would have shrugged and said that has nothing to do with their faith. It was later on when I was converted to a more fundamentalist church that it became an issue, and eventually I had to throw out the idea of inerrancy based on the evidence of the Bible itself. For me the bigger issue is that if the Bible is accurate then it paints a very dim view of God; one that is not worthy of worship.
Yup! You obviously weren’t Missouri Synod Lutheran!
Actually, I was Missouri Synod, but on the Space Coast of Florida maybe they were MS Lite!
Wow. OK, then. In my part of the world they were as conservative as they came — that’s why they split off from the rest….
1. Good luck!
2. Confirmation bias, cognitive dissonance reduction. the backfire effect, the illusion of truth effect, and the Dunning-Kruger effect help to explain some of this “alternative facts” world, but the intensity of this “alternative facts” world is still a puzzle, at least for me.
3. Your theological journey sounds very similar to mine.
4. Thanks for sharing this post.
3. Good luck!
Dr. Ehrman,
You should remind them that lying is a sin!
1. “theologian William Lane Craig . . . says things that in fact just aren’t true. ” That’s par for the course for people who believe convincing people is more important than truth;
2. Sermons very often state a slice of something and from that tiny slice, jump to a HUGE point which is not at all underpinned by facts; it’s a “fundamental” basic fact of many sermons – the truth is not needed and the audience mostly simply believes it cos – well, they believe anything the man says! I hate it. When I point this out to a friend who ‘believes’ he say “Yes, but its the SPIRIT of the point he was making that’s important.” Makes my blood boil! – Lying is OK, he’s saying -.
What did cause your doubts about the resurrection?
Probably originally it had to do with discrepancies between the accounts, and then… other things. That’s a great question. I think I’ll add it to things to post about.
Probably because it is just not physically possible in this universe anyway. Dead is dead and wishful thinking won’t change that.
I’m curious whether these misrepresentations of your beliefs are intentional. Is it likely intentional — they can’t counter your real reasons, so they create reasons they can? Is there any credible reason why they wouldn’t be aware of the deeper reasons for your loss of faith?
I really wish I knew as well!
I have a list of six “S” words that summarize difficulties with traditional and orthodox beliefs. They are:
Scripture, Soul, Sin, Salvation, Suffering and Spirituality.
Each needs expansion. As a sample – “feelings of spirituality are not universal: for some people this is a deep need and a core of being, yet for many others there is nothing. This “may” be something to do with differences in “neurobiology”, but who knows? It is simply strange if there is a Superior Being.
These religious feelings of ecstasy, transcendence, spirituality etc. that you mention are caused by self-stimulation that produces a flow of feel-good neurochemicals (endorphin, oxytocin, serotonin, dopamine) that reach the brain and produce these alterations of consciousness. Any repetitive physical or mental stimulation that produces stress will cause this to happen. And prayer (especially repetitive prayer), intense meditation, reading and re-reading religious materials etc. in locations that stimulate the senses with sights, sounds, odors (incense) that have religious significance are very effective in producing these intense feelings.
Repetition is the key and practice makes perfect. So believers who become really adept at this self-stimulation can cause a large flood of these neurochemicals to the point where they begin to hallucinate, see visions, hear voices, experience ecstasy. They are overdosing on their self-stimulated feel-good neurochemicals. They are taking a trip and getting high on Jesus. And it’s all happening entirely in their head.
I truly believe that. Because I read so much religious materials and spend hours thinking about them, I told my friend that if I ever come out claiming that I saw a vision of some sort, please inform people that I warned you about it and that these visions are all hallucinations.
Distinguished Professor,
Those familiar with your interviews and debates would see right through Dr. Craig’s false presumption as to why you became an agnostic. Time and time again, in interviews and debates you’ve given no less than five pointed and compelling reasons as to why you became an agnostic. Perhaps you’ll have time to address him at the Defenders Conference in Chicago about his erroneous claim and condescending tone. Professor Craig’s reformed theology is mainstream fundamentalism defined and thus, I cant for the life of me understand why he thinks his current theology is any different than the theology you once held and were taught at Moody and Wheaton.
Cheers,
Lanni
I imagine conservative Christians prefer to find fault with you rather than to find fault with their God, who could have made his message perfectly clear to all of us, but instead left us to disagree about what God supposedly wants and to sometimes do horrible harm and even kill each other in the belief that God wants that.
Are you going to cover any of this at the Defenders Conference?
Also, why bother with them? There is zero chance your talk will be received with an open mind by anyone.
Why do you think they invited you to speak?
I think they genuinely want to hear the other side — not necessarily to mock it or attack it, or even to believe it, but just to understand it maybe? Why do I go? I hope to spread the light. 🙂
I take an Ockham’s razor approach to the Bible. What is the simplest explanation for why a story appears?
For example, what is the simplest answer for the “water into wine” at Cana miracle story? I see two possible options; either the water did miraculously transform from one physical substance to another at Jesus’ command, or the author wanted his readers to think that Jesus had supernatural powers and that it was a great idea for them to join the author’s religious sect. Of course, a few other commentaries and teachings were thrown in for good measure.
The only known way to turn water into wine is to take some water, pour it on grape vines (repeatedly), wait a few months, harvest the grapes, smash them up and let them ferment for months or years. What was the chemical process triggered by Jesus that allowed this years-long process to happen instantly? For this answer to be the simplest one, there must be a second, undiscovered law of Physics. It requires a pretty big set of assumptions.
What assumptions must we make for the “It’s just a story I’m telling so you’ll join my church” answer. Well, we would have to assume that a person might lie in order to convince someone else to do something the liar wanted. Hmmm, what’s the simplest answer….
For Christians, the words “Belief” and “Faith” are like Harry Potter’s Cloak of Invisibility; they shield them from the universe’s natural laws. If I say “I believe strongly that it snowed two feet last Fourth of July in Miami”, it won’t change the fact that it didn’t, nor could it have ever snowed at that time of year at that latitude (save maybe for Snowball Earth days). What a person believes today cannot change what happened yesterday.
I don’t know how frequently this is brought up in discussions with apologists, but how do you usually respond when (or even if) they bring up prophecy “being fulfilled before our eyes.” My husband and I have recently started to struggle with some of the same things that seem to have led you to walk away from your faith, including the aforementioned above. Because of my concerns my mom constantly is sending me things about end time prophecy and some of it I’m kind of like “well nothing else in the Bible makes sense to me but maybe it is coming true..” So what is usually your response? Or do you have any good sources on this, to better understand? I’ve read some of your articles & thought I saw.. maybe… something about a book your writing, but now I can’t find where I saw that at.
And to add to that, I was listening to Rabbi Singer ( I don’t know if you give any merit to him), but his argument is that the author borrowed Revelation from Daniel and Isaiah. Is that the case or would you say Revelation is independent from those books? You may have addressed this in a previous post and I missed it. I apologize for all of my questions!
Revelation was definitely influenced by books of the OT, especially Daniel and Ezekiel.
Gotcha! Another point he made is there are instances in the Old Testament where God forgave individuals after he provided some sort of punishment, but then there are also some instances where no sacrifice or punishment was needed and God just forgave them. Is this the case? He didn’t give any examples & I wasn’t sure if he was just making inferences. If that is the case then why was Jesus’s sacrifice necessary? If god was able to forgive sins in the Old Testament with no intercession. Also this is a weird question, haha. But if either Judaism or Christianity had to be true. In your opinion, after examination of the texts and facts, is the evidence in favor of Christianity or Judaism?
Oh yes, God could forgive without a physical sacrifice. I don’t have verses off the top of my head, but its all over the psalms — hence the pleas for forgiveness.
I usually point out that people were saying precisely the same things about other “prophecies fulfilled in our own day” — with reference to *different* events — in the 1990s, 1970s, 1940s, 1920s, 1890s, 1860s,…. all the way back. They were never right. And of course, every time the people who held these views thought that eveyrone *before* them had been wrong, but THIS time it’s really TRUE!!! Well, how much failure does it take before we realize that the entire program is wrong??
Paul Chamberlain mischaracterizes your position as well in his new book Why People Stop Believing. In his case, it’s your position on the texts of the NT. At least, as a faithful reader of your blog for almost two years, his depiction of your views seems wrong to me.
Ah, I haven’t seen his book.
“because belief in God and Christ and his resurrection and so on don’t depend upon the doctrine of biblical inerrancy.” Now that I’ve become somewhat of an agnostic, this statement sounds pretty stupid to me. You’re going to base everything that you exist for, every dogmatic thing that you believe in on a source that is proven to have contradictions and mistakes, not to mention forgeries, etc? I have no problem believing in a supreme being, our very existence proves anything is possible. It’s just that, will the “Real Supreme Being” please stand up……
I belong to several Christian forums. While I usually don’t question any of their beliefs, I also do not post often, either. I mostly just like to read their discussions. I am appalled at how often some of them define and describe Atheists beliefs…about God, about our life styles and attitudes and why we don’t believe their religion. They are so wrong so often that all I can do is laugh. Sometimes, another Christian will correct them, even chastise them for speaking so derogatorily about atheism and how they are showing their ignorance. Then the push back begins. It seems some people of faith not only have false views of what atheists think, they NEED to believe this. Whether it makes them feel superior or that it makes their faith more triumphant, I’m not sure…but they really seem to need to think of atheists in these ridiculous and horrible terms.
Make no doubt, some atheists can be every bit as bad as religious. What I struggle with is the need for thinking this. It really isn’t hard to just ask people what or why they believe what they do. I know how deep thinking and understanding many religious people are. They aren’t blind, stupid and fearful sheep. It’s just some that are either insincere or insecure and have to have an enemy to justify their beliefs. Maybe it’s just easier to defeat the straw man than the man?
Yup, I absolutely think so. And as you suggest, it goes both ways. Maybe an honest exchange of different opinions and weighing of evidence is not as important to most people as simply being RIGHT and KNOWING you’re right….
I grew up a fundamentalist Baptist; spent my twenties as a non-denominational evangelical; and became a conservative Lutheran in my mid 40’s. I deconverted in my early 50’s. Fundamentalist Baptist apologists blame my deconversion on my becoming a Lutheran. Evangelical and conservative Lutheran apologists blame my deconversion on my former fundamentalism. Catholic apologists blame my deconversion on my Protestant “sola scriptura” mentality. None of them are ever willing to accept that it was the EVIDENCE that led to my deconversion. In their minds, my deconversion MUST have been due to a lack of understanding of the TRUE version of Christianity—THEIR version of Christianity.
I will bet that this is why conservative apologists must invent reasons for your deconversion, Dr. Ehrman. To admit that the highly educated Bart Ehrman deconverted after a thorough and objective evaluation of the evidence, would be an unthinkable admission. It would be an admission that the evidence for Christianity is contested. It is not “strong” as they like to claim.
God forbid that lay Christians realize that Bart Ehrman’s deconversion was a rational decision based on a thorough evaluation of the evidence, and not due to a faulty understanding of Christian teaching or a desire to engage in a life of sin.
Hey Bart, I also wanted to ask you a question about the so called “brothers of the Lord.” Your conclusion is that these brothers (and sisters, I suppose) were actual children of Mary and Joseph. I have nothing against this inference, but I do have a lot of questions as to why you dismiss the other possibility out of hand.
First, I disagree that the Greek term “adelphoi” (brother) is not used to refer to relatives in general. In Genesis 14:14 (and I think somewhere in Genesis 13 too), the Greek Septuagint specifically refers to Lot as “adelphoi” of Abraham, even though there is a term for nephew in the Greek language. Secondly, in Aramaic, the use of the term “brother” to refer to a relative was common. Why is it unlikely that in the early, Aramaic Church, those who were close to Christ or in some way related, came to colloquially be known as “brothers of the Lord”, a term that later got translated to Greek. I mean, even if you we accept that Mary and Joseph had other children, why is it unthinkable, that those that are mentioned as “brothers of the Lord” were related in various ways, not all literal brothers? For example, if we trust Mark, we get 6 supposed siblings at the very least. Why is it unthinkable that only 3 of these were actual blood brothers and the rest were cousins, and colloquially they are known as “brothers and sisters of the Lord”?
There is also an important point to make here. For Mark, the importance seems to be that his relatives reject him (Mark 6:4), not necessarily blood brothers.
Either way, I am not trying to say that this is a correct way of interpreting it. I am just wondering, why you completely dismiss such a logical alternative out of hand?
Thanks
I don’t think I”ve dismissed it out of hand. I’ve looked into it, considered it carefully, and decided that I don’t think it’s right. It’s worth pointing out that these texts were never read that way by Greek-speaking Christians UNTIL the idea of Mary’s perpetual virginity arose. It was only on the basis of that that interpreters started trying to get around the problem that no straightforward reading of the text would suppose that when Jesus’ mother appears to him with his brohters and sisters the author meant something other than brothers and sisters, especially since other terms were available to desribe them as relatives who were not brohters and sisters. In other words, that reading (or reaings: cousins; children from Joseph’s previous marriage; etc.) arose for theological reasons, not because it was ever seen as the most sensible way to read the text. (If I told you I went on vacation with my mom and dad and brother and sister, what would suggest to you that I meant something other than my actual siblings? Only if there is something in my wording or in the context to strongly indicate that I can’t mean that would you take it in any other way.)
Bart, I get your point, it is very logical indeed. But my question is, is the alternative possible? Is it something that is considered in scholarship?I was not at all surprised by the fact that you would conclude this. I was more surprised by how you treated the alternative. Because it doesn’t seem to be that fundamentalist of a position. To me, it seems entirely plausible.
What I also think is that Mark, having been written 4 decades after the fact, is unlikely to be literally quoting what every person said. Couldn’t it be that his point is that Jesus’ closest relatives are doubting him, and he counts down the people who in the early Church collectively came to be known as “brothers of the Lord” due to being related to Jesus in various ways. Note, I am not even arguing for perpetual virginity. Let’s say Mary had 2 other children who came to be known in the early Church, and Jesus also had a cousin who came to be an elder in the early Church, why do you exclude the possibility that collectively, they came to be distinguished as “brothers of the Lord”, to denote how close they were with Jesus. In Mark 6:4, the point that Mark was making with “brothers” is made, but this time with Jesus saying “relatives”. So the point is just as strong. Paul also uses “brother of the Lord” as an identifier, to distinguish James as someone having been a relative of Jesus.
I would also say, that in the Gospel of Luke, chapter 6, one of the disciples being mentioned is James son of Alpheus. Some identify this James as the same one who speaks at the Council of Jerusalem. If this is true, then that would further the idea that the alternative is a real possibility.
And finally, you say that this interpretation appeared only after the doctrine of perpetual virginity. But elsewhere in that other post you say that the doctrine of the perpetual virginity is already present in the Proto-evangelum of James, as early as 2 century a full blown gospel, supporting this view (wouldn’t this also imply that there was a believing community that accepted the perpetual virginity decades earlier than that?). Do you have commentaries on the NT preceding the 2nd century?
Is it at all within the realm of possibility? Sure, almost all interpretations are. Is it probable? I’d say not at all.
Are there any reputable scholars that are considering this alternative as probable (that you know of)?
There are some Roman Catholic scholars who hold this view, but even the most prominent ones there (Ray Brown, John Meiers — I haven’t really kept tab) have abandoned it. I don’t know of anyone without a prior theological commitment to the idea holding the view, simply because it just isn’t the natural way to read the text, as could be argued in detail (by looking at the context).
Dr Ehrman:
Here is what the gospel of John says:
New International Version
“Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour.
how do you understand the words “my soul is troubled” ?
john says “i and the father are one”
john says ” For I did not speak on my own, but the Father who sent me commanded me to say all that I have spoken.”
john says that jesus is in control , quote :
“Jesus, knowing all that was going to happen to him, went out and asked them, “Who is it you want?”
does it then make sense to say that johns jesus was troubled in the sense that he begged god repeatedly to remove the cup ?
quote:
“Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’?
thats what he did say in the gospel of mark. “save me” again and again with the emotions of anguish, sorrow and deeply troubled.
john does not seem to be saying to his readers “hey my prayers weren’t answered….john seems to be saying that jesus is doing the command which require no prayer”
so the “my soul is troubled” must mean something other than what it means in mark.
It seems a very strange and confused argument for an evangelical scholar to make. Isn’t it precisely your views on the trust worthiness of the bible that he has issues with rather than whether you are a Christian or not? You would still hold these even if you had become a non-evangelical Christian.
Yup.
You have said time after time (and have written books) that the problem of suffering had more impact than biblical contradictions so Craig is dishonest not only ignorant.
On the contrary of you, some of us can’t explain so clearly why we stopped believing. I think I never believed in the christian doctrines, but didn’t have a reason to reject them neither. Since I was kid I loved dinosaurs and studied evolution and science so I knew fundamentalism was wrong but found ways to reconcile science with the faith I was raised with. That way I lived for thirty years until I just “let it go”. Although I had discussions with fundamentalists and some bitter moments but I just realized I could live a fine life without that and still be thankful for the good things without hate o thinking the people inside were stupid. I just let it go. Did something similar happened to you?
No, as you say yourself, that’s not how it happened for me.
I am curious Prof Ehrman, whether you had a spiritual vision or heard voice of God when you were a fundamental Christian?
I didn’t have a literal vision or hear a literal voice, but they were in my head the whole time!
Just today, someone said I said so and so things which he took great pains to discredit, but I never said those things. I think that person just made up in his mind what I said, so he can win the argument. There are so many instances of this going on in the world. I think for many people, it blows their minds to see how humans and the universe came into creation, so they HAVE TO make up a cause they can understand to explain the birth of everything in the universe. When everything is said and done, it IS mind blowing how this universe came into being.
Comment on the Facebook page Reasonable Faith (By the way, when will Mr. Lane Craig and his acolytes realize that this is a textbook oxymoron?)
Fernando Peregrin: It is not surprising that Mr. Lane Craig maintains an ambiguous position regarding biblical inerrancy. But I think I am not mistaken if I maintain that Mr. Lane Craig firmly believes that the position of biblical inerrantists like his colleagues the late Norman Geisler; Joseph M. Holden, F. David Farrell, Albert Mohler, Jr .; D.C. Sproul, Jonh F. MacArthur, John Piper, etc., is very embarrassing for Christian apologetics. Recall that Mr. Lane Craig was the only renowned apologist who valiantly dared to state publicly that he considered it very embarrassing that more than 50% of evangelical pastors “take communion with the YEC ‘mill wheels’.” (my jocular parody of the communion of Catholics).
Mr. Lane Craig’s position is known:
“Bart Ehrman, when he was a Christian, had a flawed theological system in which inerrancy lay at the very center of his web of beliefs, so that once he became convinced of a single error in Scripture the whole web collapsed. As a result, the doctrine of inerrancy looms abnormally large in his thinking.” He, Mr. Lane Craig, proposes, instead, to place biblical inerrancy at the borders of that web of beliefs.
(To be continued)
(Continue)
This idea of Mr. Lane Craig of a “wb of beliefs” seems badly copied from W. V. O. Quine (The Web of Belief, 1970) and is useless here. Quine elaborates on the idea of “holism” in science – and not in religious faith – of Duhem. For Quine, scientific thought forms a coherent web in which any part could be altered in the light of empirical evidence, and in which no empirical evidence could force the review of a given part. This does not apply at all to the beliefs of a particular religious faith, such as Christianity. Indeed, what Mr. Lane Craig calls “core beliefs” that should be placed at the center of the web of religious beliefs, depend for their consistency and firmness in biblical inerrancy. In fact, let’s look at the simple syllogism on which the entire building of the total inerrancy of the Bible and the Christian faith is based: 1) God cannot err; 2) The Bible is God’s Word; 3) Therefore, the Bible cannot contain error.
Thus, if we admit that the inerrancy of the Bible is only partial – so that the entire web of beliefs does not collapse as far as total inerrancy, as defined in the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy (CSBI), fails – -, that there are errors in the Bible, how do we know what they are? Can not the core beliefs proposed by Mr. Lane Craig be false? Who, how and why decides the truth of these basic beliefs?
Mr. Lane Craig’s proposal seems to be simple: let us have as basic beliefs located in the center of the web of beliefs those beliefs that do not depend on biblical inerrancy and that stand firm even if biblical inerrancy has been proven — as it has been tens of thousands of times — to be a false hypothesis with a huge probability that this is indeed so.
To do this, and in the case of the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus, a basic belief among the most basic, he proposes to resort to extra-canonical sources to support Jesus ’death, burial, and resurrection.
In an upcoming comment – in order not to make this one very long – I will try to prove that Mr. Lane Craig fails in his endeavor.
Accepting that scripture can have errors because “its the work of men capable of making mistakes” is one way believers try to lessen the effect of cognitive dissonance
I cannot simply treat scripture as work of men capable of making mistakes. God cannot be the author of confusion. If he inspired men to write his message for all to come, then his message must be very clear and devoid of any errors. Especially when the punishment for those that deny his message is eternal damnation. This is a serious threat of a punishment beyond human comprehension. The All-Knowing creator could easily make his inspired scripture lacking any mistakes for ages to come. Regardless of human advancements in science, they will fail to find any errors in it.
Jews, Christians and Muslims today deal with cognitive dissonance in the same way as the early followers of the religion dealt with it.
The earlier followers of Jesus believed in Jesus as the awaited Jewish Messiah. One who will be their anointed King. A direct descendant of David, who will rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem, and gather Jews from all over the world and bring them back to the Land of Israel. The Messiah was to accomplish his mission once he makes himself know. He was going to lead the Jews to victory by conquering their enemies. When Jesus died on the cross, his disciples and followers were in a state of shock. But you would think that they’ll realize that they made a mistake and disperse. Not quite. Jesus’ followers had invested everything and offered great sacrifices so they instinctively tried to justify their sacrifices. The bigger the sacrifice, the greater the need to justify it. The alternative was unthinkable. They had to come up with an explanation and so they started preaching the second coming of Christ. No Jew ever held the belief about the second coming of the Messiah before.
Same thing happened in 1954 with the followers of Dorothy Martin who preached an imminent apocalypse. When her prophecy failed, her followers remained jubilant, their faith was reinforced and immediately began an urgent campaign to spread the message to as broad an audience as possible
For my part, I don’t see any reason why God could not be a God of confusion! Why not? (I don’t think we can define God, then say God fits our definition, and therefore God is who we define him to be. That would simply be assertion, not logic. See what I mean?)
I was referring here to the God of the bible. The one we were indoctrinated to believe in as the creator of this universe.
He is defined in the bible and not by us as a just God:
Genesis 18:25
“Far be it from You to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous and the wicked are treated alike. Far be it from You! Shall not the Judge of all the earth deal justly?”
Job 34:12
“Surely, God will not act wickedly, And the Almighty will not pervert justice.
If we were created by this God, and he gave us our intellect, then surely he knows what logic is. If this God is sending us messengers bearing false testimony while at the same time expecting us to believe in them or face his wrath, then he is definitely a confusing and deceitful God who is wicked and unjust. If this be the case, then logical people are doomed by using the very intellect that this God has giving them.
I don’t know if there is a creator or not, but the only logical explanation to me is that the bible was the work of men and the creator of this universe inspired none of these messages in the book.
Make sense?
God deceives people in the Bible.
He definitely does
So many of the prophesies that were fulfilled by Jesus had to be tortured into compliance with the story. Were ANY unambiguously straightforward predictions that clearly applied to some guy that was to be born in the future?
I *think* I know what you’re asking, but I’m not completely sure. Could you explain more fully what you have in mind?
Hey Bart,
So you don’t think losing your view of inerrancy was critical to your loss of faith? Wasn’t it a necessary “first domino to fall” before you could look at anything the scriptures say objectively and later, any other views about the Christian faith objectively? I feel like this has been the case in my life.
I would say it was the first thing to go — but I don’t think it necessarily led to the rest, at all. (So not like dominoes where one thing necessarily leads to another). Most of my friends at the time were committed Christians who said FINALLY, you’ve given up on that ridiculous doctrine of inerrancy!
You mention that the crux of the dilemma is ascertaining the bibles truly valid statements with the assumption that they are in there somewhere.
Rather than errors, can you speak to the possibility of additions in the gospels or epistles that no one today has the ability to identify textually? For instance, what is the likelihood that words like eternal could have been penned in before the word punishment to create a monumental change in the understanding of the judgement?
Or is there some evidence that makes that possibility very unlikely?
It’s entirely possible but also entirely unlikely. I’ll be posting on this soon. Since we have so many manuscripts, in general if a word is in all the manuscripts, you have to have pretty solid reasons for thinking the author didn’t write it. Most of us wish some of the words weren’t there — but wishing is not a historical criterion. So there has to be solid evidence of some kind to move it from being *possible* to being “probable.”
Dr. Ehrman,
Please forgive me if you’ve addressed this in another post (& please direct me to it if one exists), but would you say (related the the question of you being quoted truthfully) that you have been accurately quoted by Christian apologists regarding your collaborative work on the question of NT manuscript accuracy with Dr. Metzger? (e.g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DB18or8bJ10 – start at about 4:28).
Thanks.
I don’t have time to watch it, but if you’ll tell me what it says I can respond.
O.k., thanks & here you go:
During a apologetics event (in the YouTube clip), Dr. Frank Turek projects onto a screen the following quote from you: “…I have nothing but respect and admiration for [Bruce Metzger]. And even though we may disagree on important religious questions—he is a firmly committed Christian and I am not—we are in complete agreement on a number of very important historical and textual questions. If he and I were put in a room and asked to hammer out a consensus statement on what we think the original text of the New Testament probably looked like, there would be very few points of disagreement—maybe one or two dozen places of many thousands. The position I argue for in ‘Misquoting Jesus’ does not actually stand at odds with Prof. Metzger’s position that the essential Christian beliefs are not affected by textual variants in the manuscript tradition of the New Testament (Misquoting Jesus, p. 252).”
His point is (& he says) that “Ehrman disagrees with Ehrman,” meaning that in your popular works you present the situation as if we can’t really know enough from the NT manuscripts to form essential Christian teachings (or ones without serious problems) but that in this instance (& in your academic-level works) you “disagree” with your “popular” self and conclude the opposite.
What is your response to Turek’s presentation of your alleged divided self?
Ha! Interesting. And did he flash up a slide from another book or writing of mine where I ever said anything different? I would bet not! And for a very good reason….
No, he did not have a slide quoting you with another view. Referring to your 2005 “popular” volume of Misquoting Jesus he says “[Ehrman] tries to insinuate that we cannot trust what the NT documents say.” Then he projects the quote of your & Metzger’s general agreement. I’ll have to go back and reread Misquoting Jesus. Did you even come close to “insinuat[ing] that we cannot trust what the NT documents say”? Turek would have a point if you did.
The problem with people like Turek is that they are so black-and-white in their thinking that they imagine it’s a matter of “this book is inerrant” or “nothing in this book can possibly be right” — and it just doesn’t work that way. What I say in Misquoting Jesus is that we have hundreds of thousands of differences among our surviving manuscripts of the NT (that’s indisputable); scholars continue to debate about what the original wording was in hundreds of places (indisputable), and there are some places where we just can’t know (I think that’s indisputable too, since one scholar thinks one thing and another thinks the opposite, so “we” as a whole don’t “know” even if Metzger and I share the same opinion/view in most of those places (but by no means all). Makes sense?
Yes, makes sense. Thanks & Merry Christmas!
In Misquoting Jesus (I believe) you talk about how challenging inerrancy was very troubling for you but not so much for other Christians. (I believe you mentioned how you were troubled by the mustard seed not being the smallest seed in this regard) I admit that I also interpreted what you wrote as saying these contradictions lead to your loss of faith. If your faith was not hinging on that why would these errors cause you concern at all?
I’m just saying that although my interpretation may be wrong it seemed a reasonable interpretation to me as well. So hopefully you will see this is more of an innocent misunderstanding rather than any malicious attempt to misrepresent you.
But I have a different question altogether for you. You are relaying quite a bit of information about what you were thinking decades ago. Are you consulting diaries or other written records of how you thought on these issues or are you just going on your decades old memories?
Of course I think your memories of how this all shook out decades ago is reliable. But I remember a professor telling me how decades old memories are unreliable. How would you respond to this professor?
Yes I am just having some light-hearted fun in asking this – I do not mean. But after your debate with Bauckham I did want to ask you if you think you have any reliable memories of your life before the last 2 decades, and this opportunity just happened to come up.
I think most of the differences between you and other believers is not so much about facts but about where we draw lines. When do we say a source is “unreliable”? Are there a “huge amount of errors” in scripture? Are there “important” differences in the accounts?
Often I feel like many of your debates with other scholars is like arguing about whether a mile is a “long distance” or a “short distance”. Everyone might agree a mile is 5280 feet. Context and background will have you say this is a long way or a short way.
Your background from Moody suggests (to me) you would be inclined to see any errors as being very many and important.
I think most critical scholars, even without fundamentalist background, see that there are “many” mistakes in the Bible; they were important for me because they showed that my fundamentalist views of hte Bible were wrong (the more mistakes, the more wrong); they continue to be important because so many Christians continue to have these views, and they can be dangerous. Memories: yes, it’s all from memory. And yes, memory is problematic. I wrote a book about that! (Jesus Before the Gospels) These tend to be stories that I”ve been telling for decades, so my memories almost certainly are not of what happened, say, 40 years ago, but rather of what I recall saying about these things soon after 40 years ago, if you see what I mean. I repeat what I said before. The only verification comes from people who knew me back then who say the same things about me. I think in broad outline, they are almost certainly right. The details? Who knows?
I think we agree for the most part. I’ll just make a few points.
We all *think* we know why we believe certain things. But that can be tricky. Why do I believe in Christ, or Australia, or my brother? I can tell you why I think I believe in each and I think those at least play a role but, if you eliminate any one of them I might still believe. You may also legitimately conclude that I likely I believe those things for reasons I deny. Not only is there a memory concern but even if we consider our current beliefs there may be more at work than we think.
You acknowledge our beliefs have multiple causes. So the fact that you believed certain Christian doctrines before inerrancy and still believed those doctrines for some time after you dropped inerrancy does not mean dropping inerrancy wasn’t “a cause” for you to drop your faith.
I am not sure that what you describe is so different than what Craig says. Fundamentalist theology does lead to this extreme concern over whether the writers of scripture may have gotten *anything* wrong. You may have been a Christian after you dropped inerrancy, but if the view that the bible could not have any errors was a large part of your theology (as I recall you said you chose your area of study in order to defend scripture) and that was stripped away it may have substantially contributed to your loss of faith. Fundamentalist theology tends to set itself up for this sort of loss of faith.
So many of the atheist versus christian arguments I see are really atheist versus fundamentalists. The atheists are often former Fundamentalists and they are arguing things that are theologically of minor significance to many Christians. For example, I enjoy your books and debates but sometimes listening to you, I feel like screaming “I don’t really care how Judas died!”
I might tell you why I am Catholic and you might think it is for reasons other than the ones I state. That does not necessarily mean you are misrepresenting me. It could very well be an honest difference of opinion.
Dr. Ehrman
I listened to your book Misquoting Jesus back in 2006. Your personal story in it really left an impression on me because your Christian experience and emphasis on seemingly irrelevant parts of the bible, was so foreign to my own experience as a Catholic. I took away the same view William Lane Craig did. That basically you based your faith on the inerrancy of the bible. You say that is not the case but I just went back and listened again to your introduction and this is what you wrote: (as played by the audible book at 30:30):
“Before this starting with my born again experience in high school, through my fundamentalist days at moody and on through my evangelical days at Wheaton my faith had been based completely on a certain view of the bible as the fully inspired, inerrant word of God.”
I hope you can see why William Lane Craig may have said what he did, without intentionally misrepresenting you. Maybe there is some misunderstanding but I can say my take away from what you wrote was exactly the same as his. It does seem like you are remembering your days of faith and the basis for that faith a bit differently than how you reported it back in your 2005 book. (as a Christian I will never admit a contradiction! LOL!) Am I reading this wrong?
Ah, good point, yes I do see why he would misunderstand that. Interesting. I really should have worded that differently. Of course I had “faith” — I believed in God, in Christ, went to church, confessed my sins, said my prayers and so one — long before I became a born-again fundamentalist in high school. So in this sentence what I said meant something different in my head that it does indeed appear to mean on the page: I meant that starting with my born again experience in high school up through my fundamentalist days the *kind of faith* I had was the kind that trusted in the Bible as inerrant. But when I changed *that kind* of faith it didn’t mean that I gave up “the faith.” I had a deeper faith from my earliest days that was not based on inerrancy, and I held on to that after I abandoned inerrancy. So when I left that kind of faith, I didn’t stop being a Christian; I became a different kind of Christian. It was only later that I left Christianity alogether for a different set of reasons. Does that make sense? Let me know if it doesn’t, because I think I should post on this to clarify it.
I respect your honesty in admitting you now see why people may have that view of your beliefs. I am also pretty amazed how time flies and that your personal story left such an impression on me that I remembered it 13 years later. It really didn’t take me long to find that quote. Now if I can just remember to pick up my daughter from basketball I would be golden.
There is no question that sometimes people say or write things and think they are communicating one thing and then find out why people interpret it differently. Earlier tonight I was having a few beers with some friends and we talked about how Rush’s drummer died from brain cancer. Some of us are getting older so we talked about how some of the people we knew died quite fast from cancer – some just a few months and they were gone.
Anyway someone asked what we would do if we found out we only had a two months to live. I explained that I would try to get my business in order so my family would have some money from it. Another younger guy said “I would be all blow n hookers” I was sitting across from an old friend. And my old friend had a confused and distraught look on his face. He was shaking his head and quietly muttering “no man. blow n hookers???? I wouldn’t want to be doing *that* for my last 2 months of life” And then I cracked the code and said to the other guy “you mean hookers n blow” and as soon as I said that my old friend’s eyes lit up with understanding and agreement “oh yeah hookers and blow.” So yes sometimes we think we are communicating one thing but it is coming out differently.
Yikes.
Why do you think people like Pete Enns are fully aware of the brokenness of the Bible, yet still have faith? David Wolpe thinks the Exodus didn’t happen, and there is no life after death, but he’s like the mother of all Rabbis. N. T. Wright once said of you, something to the effect, “For Dr. Ehrman, if the glass is cracked, then it is shattered.” It was in a “Ask Tom Wright anything” interview or something like that. Do you look at it that way? If Jesus wasn’t born in Bethlehem, then throw the Bible, um, er, uh, – baby – ( hilarious pun intended lol) out with the bath water? If we believe that Jesus was God (I realize you do not, but the writer of John certainly did) and the son of man (ibid) but also a human, who occasionally had to blow his nose, or etc, why can’t we accept the word as being indeed from God, and with, as you have said, “human fingerprints all over it?” Perhaps God let his children write the story. At various stages of development even. Does inspiration have to mean historicity?
Actually, that’s not what I think at all. And Tom Wright knows it.