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Lunch Auction
Possibly of interest to someone in the Dallas area. It’s some serious mula, but again it is not to line my pockets — I will be giving all of the money to charity: https://www.secularbackstage.com/tools/au/Bo/SecularBackstage/euoLfNpv .
July 27, 2015
Fundamentalist Mistakes
When, three days ago, I posted my comments about the discovery of a two-page manuscript fragment of the Qur’an that, according to new reports, can be dated (technically, the parchment on which the text is written can be dated) to the lifetime of the prophet Mohammed or to a decade or so later, I had no idea that the post would be such a big deal. The Facebook version of the post has had nearly245,000 hits. and counting. Who would-a thought? There are, as you might imagine, many many comments being made. And it strikes me that many, many of these comments are simply wrong. I won’t be taking them on one at a time. I want simply to say something about a strain of comment that I’m getting (including in private email) from fundamentalists. There are various ways that one can define fundamentalism. (I often say, in jest, that the easiest definition is that a fundamentalist is: “no fun, too much damn, and not enough mental.”) I don’t need to go into a lot […]
Tags: fundamentalism, Qur'an fragments
July 28, 2015
More Hard Issues on the Qur’an Fragments
My plan is to make this the final post for now on the issue of the Qur’an fragments discovered at the University of Birmingham. Obviously the discussion could go on forever (it’s been going on for 1500 years and is not likely to stop any time soon). But I’m not a scholar of the Qur’an or of Islam, and I would prefer sticking to topics that are within my realm of expertise. I know that comment itself will prompt emails from two groups of people, (a) from Muslims urging me to study the Qur’an so I will see that it is true and convert to Islam and (b) from Christians urging me to subject the Qur’an to the same kind of scrutiny to which critical scholars have subjected the NT, in order to show that Islam too has abundant problems. The reason I know this will happen is because I get both kinds of emails, *all* the time! But I’m sorry to say, I’m not going to convert to Islam and I’m not going to […]
Tags: Qur'an fragments
July 29, 2015
Intentional Changes of the Text
I’m getting back now, with this post, to the thread that I started a full month ago in response to a question a member of the blog had related to the field about one of my books that deals with the textual criticism of the New Testament. Just to bring us all back up to speed, I will here repeat the question and briefly summarize what I have covered so far. READER’S QUESTION: Dr. Ehrman, I do not know if others would find this interesting, but I would love to know how you developed the idea for The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture. How did you go about researching it? How long did it take? Is it a once in a lifetime work? RESPONSE: To start with, I have devoted a number of posts to unpacking what the title of my actually means. First, in several posts, I’ve explained what the term “orthodoxy” means to scholars of early Christianity, and what it doesn’t mean. To sum up as succinctly as I can (for fuller […]
Tags: orthodox corruption of scripture, textual criticism
July 30, 2015
Illustration of a Textual Change: Did Mark Make a Mistake?
I have started discussing “intentional” changes of the text of the New Testament – that is alterations found in manuscripts of the New Testament that appear to have been made by scribes who *wanted* to change the text, presumably in order to make it say (more closely) what they wanted it to say. Let me illustrate my discussion by dealing with three of the most interesting textual variants in the Gospel of Mark, one of which is an easy problem to solve, one that is a bit more difficult, and one that has generated a lot of discussion over the years and no firm consensus. This will take a couple of posts. In a still later post I will talk about the criteria and arguments that scholars typically use in order to resolve these questions. I will be alluding to those criteria and arguments here in my explanations of why one form of the text appears to be what the author originally wrote, and the other form of the text appears to be the scribal […]
Tags: Gospel of Mark, scribal tendencies, textual criticism, textual variants
July 31, 2015
An Intentional Change in Mark 15:34
I have started giving some instances of what appear to be “intentional” changes made by scribes, as opposed to simple, accidental, slips of the pen. In my previous post I pointed to an example in Mark 1:2, in which scribes appear to have altered a text because it seems to embody an error. If I’m wrong that this is the direction of the change – that is, if the text that I’m arguing is the “corruption” is in fact the original text – then there is still almost certainly an intentional change still involved, but made for some other reason. But either way, the change does not appear to have been made simply by inattention to detail. Here I’ll give a second instance from Mark of what appears to be an intentional change. I stress that these alterations “appear” to be intentional since, technically speaking, we can never know what a scribe intended to do. I use the term I simply to mean an alteration to the text that a scribe appears to have made […]
Tags: Gospel of Mark, scribal tendencies, textual criticism, textual variants
August 2, 2015
A Variant in Mark 1:1 — Accidental or Intentional?
I have been talking about different kinds of changes made in our surviving New Testament manuscripts, some of them accidental slips of the pen (that’s probably the vast majority of our textual variants) and others of them intentional alterations. One of the points that I’ve been trying to stress is that at the end of the day it is, technically speaking, impossible to know what a scribe’s “intentions” were (or if he had any, other than the intention of copying a text). None of the scribes is around to be interviewed, and so – as with a lot of history – there is a good bit of scholarly guess-work that has to be done. This guess work is not simply shooting in the dark, however. And it is dead easy for a highly trained expert to tell the difference between informed guesswork and just plain guesswork. But at the end of the day we are always talking about historical probabilities, not historical certainties, when it comes to figuring out why a scribed decided to change […]
Tags: Gospel of Mark, scribal tendencies, textual criticism, textual variants
August 3, 2015
Mark 1:1 as an Intentional Alteration of the Text
In yesterday’s post I began to explore a textual variant in Mark 1:1 that could be explained either as an accidental slip of the pen or an intentional alteration of the text. We’re plowing into some heavy waters here – I know some members of the blog like me to go deeper into serious scholarship on occasion, and others would rather prefer that I not. But here I am, in the thick of it. All of the posts in this thread are a lead up to answer the question from weeks ago now, about what led me to write The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture. I’ve found that I can’t really get to that without providing some substantial background on what it is the field of textual criticism actually does. So where we are just now, by way of review: there are thousands of textual witnesses to the NT (Greek manuscripts, manuscripts of the versions, writings of the church fathers who quote the text); these witnesses attests hundreds of thousands of variance among themselves; the vast […]
Tags: Gospel of Mark, textual criticism
August 4, 2015
Paul’s Letter to the Thessalonians
In my two previous posts I discussed a textual variant that could be explained either as a scribal accident or as an intentional change. I thought it might be interesting to point out a few other variants that also could go either way. These are all intriguing problems in and of themselves, and by talking about them I can illustrate a bit further the kinds of quandaries textual critics find themselves in when trying to decide what an author wrote when we have different versions of his words in different manuscripts. My plan right now is to look at three variants in three different mini-threads (all of them subsumed under the larger thread of why I wrote The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture). Today is one of my favorites, a particularly thorny issue found in 1 Thessalonians 2:7. I can’t get to a discussion of that issue without providing some important background; just the very basics of the background will take me two posts, before I can even start to explain the textual problem. First Thessalonians […]
Tags: Paul, textual criticism, Thessalonians
August 5, 2015
The Return of Jesus (Rapture?) in 1 Thessalonians
Since I’ve started talking about Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians, the earliest Christian writing of any kind that we have, in preparation for discussion one tiny little textual variant in 1 Thess. 2:7,which involves only the presence or absence of a single letter in a single word, but on which the meaning of the passage hinges, I can’t let the opportunity pass without saying something further by way of background (none of which is especially relevant to this particular textual variant!) on the letter. The reason: this is the letter that modern-day conservative Christians who believe that the “rapture” is about to occur base their views on. The “rapture” is a modern doctrine/idea. Even though some conservative Christians think this is one of the main points of the Christian faith, historically it has rarely been that. In fact, for most of history, most Christians simply haven’t believed in a rapture. The doctrine of the rapture is that Jesus will be returning from heaven (sometime soon) and when he does those who had believed in […]
Tags: Paul, rapture, Thessalonians
August 6, 2015
The Myth of the Rapture: Calling a Spade a Spade
I am sometimes torn between wanting to be sensitive to people’s deeply rooted religious convictions and calling a spade a spade. think many readers would be surprised (and dubious) that have this sensitivity, since I’m often blasted precisely for trouncing people’s religious beliefs. But that’s almost never my intention. The one exception is when it comes to fundamentalism. I have no qualms about attacking Christian fundamentalist thinking head-on. But even then try to be sensitive to the people holding onto this kind of thinking, and I try to engage it with reason and evidence rather than with ridicule. But there are times when it is worthwhile calling a spade a spade, and sometimes we ought to just do that. I’ve been thinking about the passage summarized in the post yesterday from 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, the passage from which the fundamentalist view of the “rapture” principally comes from. Jesus returns on the clouds of heaven, the dead in Christ rise first, and then those who are alive who are his followers are snatched up into the […]
Tags: Paul, rapture, Thessalonians
August 8, 2015
Ehrman Licona Debate – Prove Jesus Rose from Dead
On February 28, 2008 I flew back to (near) my home turf, Kansas City, Missouri where I debated Christian apologist Mike R. Licona on the topic, “Can Historians Prove that Jesus Rose from the Dead?” The event took place on at 7 p.m. held at the Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. You can guess whose side the crowd was on! Mike is one person I’ve debated over the years with whom I have a very good relationship. When we’re not going at it verbally, we get along well and have a chummy relationship. Even if each of us thinks the other is completely dead wrong about things — including the important topic of this debate. Mike Licona is author of Why Are There Differences in the Gospels and Evidence for God: 50 Arguments For Faith From The Bible, History, Philosophy, And Science, among others. The debate is discussed in the book “Come Let Us Reason: New Essays in Christian Apologetics” edited by Paul Copan, William Lane Craig. Chapter 9 is written by Michael Licona, which reviews this debate […]
Tags: debate, Jesus, Mike Licona, resurrection
October 3, 2015
A Thief in the Night
Discussing the mythology found in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 has made me remember something that happened some 35 years ago. It’s a pretty funny story. At the time I was still a church going Christian. The church I was attending was evangelical, but I was moving away from a conservative theology and its strict, literal interpretation of the Bible. I was becoming socially quite liberal, and was starting to take a more liberal view of the Bible. I still thought that in *some* sense it was the Word of God, but I did not think that it was infallible or true in every way. I had already come to see that parts of it contradicted one another, that there were historical implausibilities, and mistakes of various kinds. For me at that stage, the Bible was not so much the words God had given his human authors as it was a book that was written with real religious insight by special authors whose words were a medium through which God could deliver his message to humans. It wasn’t […]
Tags: Left behind
August 9, 2015
The Textual Problem of 1 Thessalonians 2:7
Now that I have discussed the purpose of 1 Thessalonians and spent a couple of posts talking about one of its most interesting passages, on which the modern Christian notion of a “rapture” is based, I am able to return to my point of departure, a textual variant found in 1 Thess. 2:7. This variant has nothing to do with the question of what Paul thought would happen when Jesus returned, sometime in his lifetime. It is an earlier part of the letter where Paul is reminding the Thessalonians of the time that he had spent with them when he converted them to their new faith. This is a very joyful part of the letter, one of the most sentimental passages of all of Paul’s letters, where he speaks of the relationship he had with his converts when he was there. But the description is a bit hard to pin down, in part because of this one textual variant. The variant depends on the presence or non-presence of just one letter of the alphabet. Some […]
Tags: 1 Thessalonians 2:7, Paul
August 10, 2015
More Intriguing Problems with 1 Thessalonians 2:7
The textual problem of 1 Thess 2:7, as I have started to outline it, is an unusually interesting one for textual critics, since the arguments for one reading or another seem to cancel each other out so neatly. It is a difference of only one letter. Did Paul remind the Thessalonians that when he and his missionary colleagues were with them they became like “infants” among them rather than great, powerful, and demanding apostles? Or did he say they became “gentle” among them? Now, you might be saying: Who Cares? Well, it does matter to New Testament interpreters. It may not matter like having a passage that determines a major doctrine (Who was Christ? Was his death an atoning sacrifice? Is there a trinity?). But there are lots of things that matter that are not major doctrines. Any scholar of the New Testament wants to know the basic gist of each book of the New Testament; and its major themes and ideas; and the meaning of each of its passages; and the meaning of each […]
Tags: 1 Thessalonians 2:7, Paul
August 11, 2015
Gentle as a Nurse in 1 Thessalonians 2:7
I am about ready to wrap up my discussion of the textual problem of 1 Thessalonians 2:7. When recalling his time with the Thessalonians, when he had worked hard not to be a burden with any of them, did Paul indicate that he and his missionary companions had become “as infants, as a nurse tending her children” or that they had become “gentle, as a nurse tending her children.” It is not an obvious decision, whether you think the change was made accidentally or on purpose. (If you think it *is* obvious, look at the preceding two posts). It seems like it might go either way. I myself have an opinion on the matter (textual scholars tend to have opinions); but I”ll hold off on that for a minute. First: some of you might be wondering: which of these readings do the best surviving manuscripts actually suggest? Is one of the readings (“infants” or “gentle”) better attested than the other? Which reading do our oldest and best manuscripts have? Here, as it turns out, the […]
Tags: 1 Thessalonians 2:7, Paul
August 13, 2015
When I Started in Textual Criticism
For a very long thread now, I have talking about the textual criticism of the New Testament. As I said early on, “textual criticism” is a technical term. It does not refer to any kind of analysis of the texts of the New Testament; that is to say, it is *not* about the interpretation of the New Testament texts. It is specifically about how one goes about evaluating the surviving manuscripts (and versions, and church father quotations) of the New Testament in order to reconstruct what the authors originally wrote: (that is, it does not ask what the authors *meant* by what they wrote; it is instead concerned with establishing what, exactly, they did write. Textual criticism needs to be applied to every surviving writing – from Homer’s Iliad to Wordsworth’s poems to … the Bible. Without textual criticism you would not know what an author said. All of this discussion has been preliminary to answering the question asked by a reader concerning what I had in mind when I wrote my book The Orthodox […]
Tags: textual criticism
August 14, 2015
Why New Testament Textual Criticism Had Grown Moribund
In my previous post I had begun to indicate that the field of New Testament textual criticism had grown notably and depressingly moribund in America by the late 1970s when I began my graduate studies. But I didn’t explain just *why* most New Testament scholars – let alone scholars in other fields of religious studies or the humanities more broadly – did not find the field interesting and / or important. The reason has to do with what I laid out as one of the almost-universally-held views among textual critics (and other scholars at all connected with the field): That the entire goal, purpose, and raison d’être of the discipline was to establish what an author originally wrote (a goal, purpose, and raison d’être that may seem both reasonable and self-evident. But keep reading my posts). Why would that view have created such apathy toward the field, such a lack of interest in pursuing its objectives? For the most part, it was because New Testament scholars assumed that the field had achieved its goal. We […]
Tags: textual criticism
August 15, 2015
The Malaise in New Testament Textual Criticism
I indicated in my previous post that the overall character of the text (as opposed to the apparatus) of the Greek New Testament in 1981 was widely perceived by New Testament scholars in to be pretty much “set,” and not all much different from what it had been in 1881. I need to explain that a bit. I chose 1881 intentionally (not just for personal reasons: by fluke, it happens to have been exactly a century before I finished my Master’s degree in which I focused on New Testament textual criticism). 1881 was a very big year for the field. It was the year that two famous New Testament scholars from England, named Fenton John Anthony Hort and Brooke Foss Westcott, published their highly significant edition of the Greek New Testament, which they called, with some temerity, The New Testament in the Original Greek. (Temerity because they were claiming to have solved virtually all the problems of establishing “the” original text.) This was a huge event, as it turns out. But to make sense of […]
Tags: textual criticism
August 17, 2015
My Original Foray into Textual Criticism
I have been explaining why “textual criticism,” the discipline that examines the surviving manuscripts of a text and then tries to reconstruct what the author originally wrote, had fallen on hard times by the time I got into the field. The main reason, I think, is that most New Testament scholars thought that all the serious work in the field had been done, that we pretty well knew what the “original text” said, and that all that was left were a few mopping up exercises. Moreover, to engage in those exercises required extraordinary expertise in remarkably recondite areas of inquiry. It was a lot of very hard work to deal with all the evidence, and the yield was so slight (change of a word or phrase here or there throughout the New Testament), that most scholars didn’t see why they should bother. Why not do more interesting things, like actually *interpret* the text? I was an exception to that rule. I was passionate about the field of textual criticism. Looking back, I think I became […]
Tags: textual criticism
August 19, 2015