(2 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5)
Loading...Now that we’ve seen a couple of posts by Jeff Siker (the author of Jesus, Sin, and Perfection in Early Christianity and Homosexuality in the Church) – taking a position quite different from my own on a question of broad importance – and some of the comments that have come back on it, and his reply at length to one of them, I think we are in a position to sit back and see how that “worked” for the blog. My sense is that it worked very well. If you think otherwise, please let me know.
I do not want to do this sort of thing every week – but I’m thinking once every three or four weeks might be interesting. I have received several suggestions for the kinds of things people would like to see, as follows:
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- A Hebrew Bible scholar talking about the historical problems with the Hebrew Bible comparable to those we deal with on this blog for the New Testament;
- An archaeologist to discuss the evidence that Nazareth really did exist;
- Another blogger on NT / Early Christianity to post on anything they feel like as a way to show what kind of thing you might find on their blog more regularly;
- Another “believer” dealing with the kind of question Jeff Siker dealt with, since it seems to be a hot issue. (Someone suggested I ask Dale Martin, for example).
- A post by someone (say, Mark Goodacre, the author of The Case Against Q) who doesn’t believe in the existence of Q.
- A conservative evangelical Christian scholar, like Dan Wallace, author of Reinventing Jesus, or Darrell Bock, author of Dethroning Jesus, for example, to stake out some kind of position that runs directly contrary to mine on one point or another (I wouldn’t debate the person on the blog; but I would reserve the right to indicate where I think he is misreading me if I think he is).
- A current graduate student (either in my program or some other) to describe in very brief fashion (not easy for a grad student to do!) what his/her dissertation is about.
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There are some other ideas that have been floated, but this gives a sense. If you have any that you are keen on, do let me know. I think the only restrictions are (1) that I would like the poster to be a creditable scholar and (2) that I am not interested in having a point-counterpoint debate with someone who despises my very being…..
All of those sound good ideas in some way or other. I’d have obvious reservations about the conservative evangelical scholars, and the grad students would have to be doing something interesting and worthwhile (rather than Actuating a New Hermeneutic of the Emperor’s New Clothes: Fashionable Verbiage Unconstrained by Semantic Value).
And I for one would not be interested in reading the sort of point-counterpoint debate where one side clearly had lost all contact with anything approaching decency or even reality. The debate format would only really be appealing were it on the level of, say, debating Goodacre on Q.
I’d love to hear from Dale Martin
and it would be interesting to hear from a conservative NT scholar like Craig Evans.. http://www.craigaevans.com
I second that one! Thanks Adam.
Seconding the suggestion to engage Dale Martin.
Why limit it to Americans? Isn’t scholarship. and the internet, international?
[Yes, I know Dr. Goodacre’s nationality, but he teaches in the U.S., and I’m referring to scholars who teach at non-U.S. institutions in my previous comment.]
With a few exceptions it’s hard for us to know who despises your very being, for me at least anyway 🙂 I’d like to second the suggestion of a grad student writing about their dissertation.
I also meant to add that personally I’m not really interested in conservative evangelical viewpoints. I hear those enough from every member of my family.
I visit this blog because I want to learn and I want to learn from those who take study of scripture seriously.
I also like what Jeff Siker presented very much and I think it is good to hear from all (rational) sides and about a variety of subjects related to scriptural scholarship.
My personal interest is New Testament archaeology and I would like some presentations from those in that field. I read what James Tabor does on his blog and FB, and there are so many others doing good work in the field. I’m thinking of Gabby Barkay (sp?) who’s working on the Solomon’s Temple dump site in Jerusalem or Shimon Gibson with his John the Baptist cistern. So many good sources.
My son, a conservative minister, is trying to get me to read Daniel Wallace to counter your point of view (which he does not accept at all) and I would like to hear from him on current inerrancy issues..
Doing this will make this blog an even better learning site. I would vote yes on this idea.
I found the format that you prepared and that Prof. Siker executed was marvelous. It helped me greatly that Prof. Siker, who represented a position that I have never understood and have long wanted to understand, laid out his thoughts so that I could finally see and evaluate them. Before his posts, I felt totally mystified as to why so many first-rate New Testament / Early Christianity scholars remain Christian (at least in some very attenuated sense). Now I have a much better understanding of at least one such scholar’s ideas. His posts caused me to do some helpful thinking that I couldn’t have done without his comments.
I would like to see exactly the same procedure with another scholar. I’d say Prof. Dale Martin, whom I believe you’ve called the smartest NT scholar you know, would be an excellent choice.
I don’t see the harm in a random blog by another scholar every so often, but it’s really not what draws my attention to the site or your Facebook page. I’m a big fan of all your work and I love reading about the New Testament from a historical perspective. I also consider myself agnostic and a big fan of bible history, so the Hebrew Scholar sounds like a great idea, as do the archaeologist writing about Nazareth, the Q perspective and a current graduate student talking about their dissertation.
To be honest, I gained nothing from the blog by Jeff Siker. While people were tripping over themselves with thanks, I gained nothing from it. He has an amazing resume, knows his stuff, but his personal theology on faith did nothing for me. It’s obviously a big topic for lots of members, but I see faith as the absence of proof and evidence. While that’s not necessarily a bad thing (I still have faith that Liverpool will win the premier league this year even though they’re 30 points behind Manchester United) It’s not what I look forward to when I read your blogs. I love the history, I love the evidence, I love the facts.
Maybe you can have Dan Wallace write a blog on condition he lets you examine his mystery copy of Mark from the 1st century?
I thought Jeff Siker’s guest posts were great. It was good to watch you all establish a reasoned religious dialog outside of the usual spit and vitriol of polemics or apologetics. If you intended this to provoke reflection and thought, you succeeded.
How exciting. Excelent ideas.
TBH I am more than happy just to read your stuff after all it’s what I cam here for.
You seem to have enough material to last for years and you work rate is unbelievable. You also cover a variety of topics including some personal thoughts on occasion.
If getting others in is a solution to a problem then I don’t know what the problem is.
It may be a good idea to have a topic that feeds off a similar situation in the way you have debated in the past with other scholars, on stage. The topic is chosen. Then one scholar post his take, then (under his post) you post your take on the topic. This debate could go on indefinetly through the blog being updated everyday or so. I have some ideas: solid evidence on the correct names of “the” twelve disciples; Daniel Wallace manuscript evidence, the end of Romans, does it mention a female apostle, Daniel says no, Greek is the key. Hope it helps.
Sounds like a great plan!
There are excellent ideas! I am looking forward reading these kinds of posts.
I very much like the idea of getting perspectives of critical scholars who disagree with you on substantive matters, to give us Ehrman groupies a broader perspective. I would also like to hear perspectives from conservative scholars Richard Bauckham and N. T. Wright.
I, too, would like to hear from an evangelical / conservative NT scholar.
All of the suggestions are great. It appears our choice of subjects is infinite. Looking forward to whatever direction this takes us.
Ron
“…[D]espises my very being….” Surely not!
I say think those ideas are very good.
Islam is submission to God and is the religion of Abraham
Why not believe in Prophet Muhammad: His message makes sense, teaching that Moses and Jesus were messengers from the same One God and were prophets like Abraham and that they all preached monotheism and submission to the God of Abraham. The fact that there are terrorists amongst Muslims doesn’t mean the religion is wrong or that it should be ignored.
The Hebrew bible is not revealed. The New Testament is not revealed. The Torah of Moses was altered and modified. There must be a god and the prophets are true. The Islamic narrative is consistent and combines all of that perfectly and eliminates contradiction and nonsense. It is very simple. Some are deceived by its simplicity; others are deceived by terrorism. Many are distracted and misled by both.
For one who wants to believe in God there is no alternative to Islam.
Judaism and Christianity are full of contradictions: logical, historical and theological. Neither has an authentic text. The scriptures for both religions have been scientifically shown to be written and edited by multiple unknown authors over a period of centuries. The capricious and anonymous scribes are the authors of the Tanakh. Paul of Tarsus – and not Jesus – is the founder of Christianity. The one and the same religion of Moses and Jesus had been usurped.
Islam takes Judaism and Christianity back to their origins without the extra baggage. The monotheism of the prophets is not compatible with the trinity (a Christian extra baggage) and is not compatible with the rejection of the last two messengers of God: Jesus and Muhammad (a Jewish extra baggage).
It is either Islam or agnosticism or atheism. Islam is the better way. It is the clear way and the only way.
Adam
Dear Dr. Ehrman,
Is there any certain instance in the manuscript evidence of a Gospel
lacking the basic title that it has in our present Bibles?
Also, would you be so kind as to give me your thoughts regarding
the following?
“What is striking here is the complete unanimity over the four titles
of the Gospels in a distribution extending throughout the whole of the
Roman Empire towards the end of the second century, from Lyons to
Carthage and as far as the Egyptian Chora. This unanimity of testimony
to the titles of the Gospels, for which there are still no variants of
any kind in this early period, rules out a late origin from the middle
of the second century.” (_Studies in the Gospel of Mark_, 1985, p. 66)
“Let those who deny the great age and therefore basically the origin-
ality of the Gospel superscriptions in order to preserve their ‘good’
critical conscience, give a better explanation of the completely
unanimous and relatively early attestation of these titles, their
origin and the names of authors associated with them.”
(_The Four Gospels and the One Gospel of Jesus Christ_, 2000,
p. 55)
Thank you for your time and attention.
Sincerely,
Keith Fredrickson
Dear Dr. Ehrman,
Even though you no doubt recognized the words quoted in my previous posting in spite of my failure to give the author’s name, for the benefit of others I wish to add that the author is the German NT scholar Martin Hengel
(1926-2009).
Sincerely,
Keith Fredrickson
Yes, I’m afraid Hengel hasn’t carried the day on this one. For a good refultation, see Francois Bovon, “The Synoptic Gospels and the Noncanonical Acts of the Apostles,” in Harvard Theological Review 81 (1988) 20-23. Short story: Hengel exaggerates our knowledge of titles. The first one even to *mention* names of these books is Irenaeus in 185 CE. That’s a century after they were circulating, apparently anonymously. If he’s right, why doesn’t Ignatius, or Justin, or … anyone else seem to know the titles? There are, btw, various titles attested in our manuscripts, and there are VERY few mss before 200, so they don’t help us much.
Thank you.
My opinion:
Dr Ehrman is enough, I would rather read your opinions doctor..
I agree with what seems to be rising consensus, that this is a very good idea.
I think the only specific request I’d make is (given how important the interaction with Dr Ehrman has been for this blog) that it be assumed that any “guest posters” will try to respond to comments on their posts on a level comparable to what Dr Ehrman does.
All of the above sound great to me.
I would like to see a posting about the premise of Robert Eisenman on James (Jacob) the brother of Jesus (Yeshua). Having waded through what he wrote, and more than doubtful about some of his decisions on the ‘code’ he finds in the New Testament, nevertheless his original point of what may have been the historical reality of the original followers of Jesus vs. Paul looks as possible to me as anything else. Especially the agent-of-Rome idea of Saul/Paul, even if it was more benevolent than Eisenman, or Operation Messiah: St Paul, Roman Intelligence and the Birth of Christianity Rose Mary Sheldon (Author) posit. In reality Christianity up to the current time has more than not over the centuries overtly political, and when in power unapologetically so. IMO I think it is because the style of the writing and the idea is inherent in both, and rooted in it’s very beginnings.
credible scholarship, value Ehrman’s very being, cordial and not into point-by-point debate – James White fits the bill perfectly 😉
Yeah, James is my guy….
I think it would be interesting to have a debate between you and James Tabor about your differing views of Jewish apocalyptic views and the physical resurrection of Jesus as seen by his earliest disciples.
yes I second that! Can You have James Tabor comment on the blog giving his opinions and the two of you have a debate on say what happened historically from cross to tomb to “resurrection” theories in the 30s C.E ?
I like the Hebrew scholar idea.
I would like to see an evangelical scholar lay out the objective evidence and logical arguments for why (s)he thinks the Bible was dictated by an all-knowing and all-powerful God.
I think your guest contributors or bloggers idea worked. I would like to hear something from prof. Gerd Luedemann who is highly historical-critical, if you get such a state. What about prof. Joel Marcus and Adela Yabro-Collins? Jan G. van der Watt? Prof. Lawrence Schiffman? Helmut Koester? Wayne Meeks? (I can suggest a few South Africans, but I suspect that they might not fit your criteria as a lot of research published in Afrikaans is not properly accessible to the world… but a lot of them also publish in English.) To deal with your graduate problem: When I did my masters in Semitic Languages I looked at similarities between Psalm 82 and the Ugaritic Kirtu (Keret) story. Both texts uses the traditional Canaanite polytheistic imagery of the meeting of the gods and turns it on its head. Both texts plays on the idea of what it means to be a god. Psalm 82’s vocabulary agrees more or less 68% with the vocabulary of the Kirtu story. I hope that is short enough for dealing with the graduate contribution. To make it shorter: Please, let us not have a contribution by a graduate student, except if it is really worthwhile and interesting.
JW:
Professor Ehrman, I would suggest a post from you commenting on Dan Wallace’s article on Mark 1:1:
http://bible.org/article/does-mark-11-call-jesus-8216god%E2%80%99s-son%E2%80%99-brief-text-critical-note
You conclude that “son of God” is not original while he concludes that it is. I think what you are primarily looking for is where someone you consider with authority has disagreed with you on specific points. I see the specific main points of disagreement here as follows:
1) Professor Wallace sees the related edit of Sinaiticus as good evidence of originality, implying that it is a “correction”. I see this as the best individual evidence of addition as the key question is the direction of change, and here we have extant and direct evidence of the direction of change consistent with the timing of the other evidence for change to addition. You do not address this issue in tOCoS.
2) Professor Wallace argues defensively against the early Patristic evidence for addition, saying “Origen and a few other early patristic authors”. Actually the Patristic Greek is unanimously for addition for the first two hundred years.
You only mention Origen regarding Patristic evidence.
3) Professor Wallace’s main argument is for accidental omission. Just from reading Professor Wallace’s article you would think that Sinaiticus was written in small caps. It was written in Caps which also suggests that its more immediate ancestors were as well. Caps would be harder to miss than small caps. You do not discuss this.
4) Professor Wallace observes an inclusio with “son of God” at 1:1 and 15:39. I think Professor Wallace has a point here although you discuss and deny any such point. I’d like to point out that “Mark” otherwise never shows “son of God” via editorial comment, only by narrative. Do you consider this too subjective to mention?
5) Professor Wallace makes the point that the offending phrase is a string of genitives and such strings are statistically more likely to have textual variation. A righteous observation I think in general but specifically here the issue is the originality of two entire words. I don’t believe you comment directly on this in tOCoS.
6) Your general argument here is that a combination of a minimum of quality evidence and the difficult reading principle is enough to conclude addition. Professor Wallace accepts in general the difficult reading principle of shorter is more likely than longer but here claims a good reason to explain shorter = accidental omission due to close and similar letters. The context of your argument is that the specific words “son of God” would always be more likely to be added than omitted due to their qualitative value but especially so here since the issue of the timing of Jesus becoming son of God before or during the baptism was a significant argument in the early centuries. Professor Wallace does not address this.
Joseph
I get tired every time I see Dan making an argument….
Professor Ehrman:
“I get tired every time I see Dan making an argument….”
JW:
That’s why you should write a counter argument during your Sabbatical
Ah, my point is that he uses such a shot gun approach — point after point after point after point after point — that a full evaluation and refutatoin is too exhausting! Let him get on with it. 🙂
Regarding your (entirely reasonable!) objection to Dan Wallace’s “shotgun approach”, I recently ran across the following pejorative for that sort of thing: a Gish Gallop.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Gish_Gallop
Is this more or less what Wallace does, Bart? Thx! 🙂
Ha! Never heard that term before.
I like the idea of having your readers submit questions to guest authors. Perhaps give a brief author profile or introduction and we can submit questions to that scholar. Kind of like how you responded to Witherington
As far as OT Professors, I would love to see you invite Peter Enns. He was an OT Professor at Westminister Theological Seminary and was fired because of his book “Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament”. He is still a committed Christian but he is definitely spearheading a new trend among Christians who are disillusioned with the high view of Scripture. He has a great blog where he discussed things of this nature very candidly http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/
I would also love to hear from Joseph Fitzmyer and John Meier – two catholic scholars who seem equally committed to their faith and responsible scholarship without letting one area effect the other
Try out some fresh scholarship on early manuscripts. Larry Hurtado posted this http://larryhurtado.wordpress.com/2013/02/07/a-substantial-study-of-early-christian-manuscripts/ about ‘a noteworthy PhD thesis produced by Alan Mugridge, working in the University of New England (Australia) under supervision of Professor Greg Horsley: “Stages of Development in Scribal Professionalism in Early Christian Circles” (submitted 2009).”‘
Here you have an opportunity to engage with a new generation of scholarship (sorry about the inference that you are growing older!) on manuscripts. Consider inviting this scholar from Australia to do “dueling posts” with you.
And, of course, I very much like the idea of the archaeology of Nazareth. It addresses familiar topics: mythicists, Christianity in the Roman Near East, and Christianity and Judaism in Israel in the late Roman Empire.
Yes, I’m looking forward to seeing this in print, and seeing how it differs in its conclusions from the only other full study of scribes in this way, the doctoral dissertatoin written (and published then by Oxford Press) by my student Kim Haines-Eitzen (Title: Guardians of Letters)
Well, then, you shameless-promoter-of-your-students’-books …
Have them both (Mugridge and Haines-Eitzen) write guest posts for you!!!
Really … how did we miss THAT as a recommendation for Posts by Outsiders?